Transcripts

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast.

The era of unquestioned US hegemony is undoubtedly on the decline, but the future is much more complicated and uncertain than the straightforward idea of China rising to take our place that we've been told. Though Trump is not the cause of US decline, he may help send us out in a tragic blaze of glory.

For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our Top Takes in about 45 minutes today includes The Muckrake Political Podcast, The New Statesman, Al Jazeera English, Times Radio, The Red Nation Podcast, and the Democracy in Europe Movement '25.

Then in the additional Deeper Dives half of the show, there will be more in six sections: Section A, American Decline. Section B, China. Section C, Russia. Section D, France. Section E, Corporate Control. And Section F, What Comes [00:01:00] Next.

Things Fall Apart - The Muckrake Political Podcast - Air Date 1-28-25

NICK HAUSELMAN - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: You've been afraid of this for a long time and have been sounding the whistle about AI. And, when you start to see just how good it can be, you start to feel like, yes, we're all going to have our own personal Jarvis, like we see in the Marvel movies, which in the movie version supposedly makes life easier. But I think we're going to be able to list a few things here, why this is so dangerous.

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: I have a lot of things that I need to set the table with it. I don't think it's good. I think it's actually really bad. I think it's been marketed to us as this world-changing sort of technology, but it's just bells and whistles. It's just regurgitated stuff that has been stolen and then gets repackaged and sold back to us.

One of the things that tech insiders have been telling us for a while now is that we've probably already reached peak AI as we know it. It's not going to be some sort of a sentient creative genius that's going to change society. It's a gimmick.

And a large reason that we're in the situation we are right now is that we've had [00:02:00] decades of neoliberalism that has led to a monopolistic environment. We have all of these big major tech corporations that, we've covered it, they just gobble up all competitors. Basically the main goal that you have, if you have a tech startup or a business at this point, is that a bigger fish will buy you and incorporate you into what they're doing.

It has more or less stalled out innovation in the United States of America. We're in this weird period where our tech sucks, nothing really is making these big advancements. Everything from your phone to all these programs, they are not impressive and they're not actually pushing things forward.

Now, all of a sudden, you have an environment where the oligarchs who made incredible amounts of money -- and we've talked about it, merging with the state apparatus, this is one of the reasons why we now have this oligarchical class, they were carrying out the functions of empire -- now they have reached a point where they're in decay. They're not [00:03:00] really producing anything anymore that people actually want. They can't even make a car that doesn't explode or crash into a crowd of pedestrians at this point, right?

So, they have used their power to basically turn the government into a redistributive machine turned on high. We saw the other day, Nick, the announcement of the Stargate program, which supposedly was going to see half a trillion dollars put towards AI. I have a weird instinct at this point that was meant to anticipate this, to go ahead and blunt the effect of this technology being put out there and put forward by China.

We are now dealing with tech corporations that have effectively taken over nation states that are now competing for who will dominate a market. We've now moved into a monopolistic competition on the world scale. I have a few feelings about this, Nick. I think that the release of DeepSeek is going to [00:04:00] lead -- Mark Anderson, who's a complete asshole, has already called this "AI Sputnik moment." And for people who don't know the history, when Sputnik got launched by the Soviet Union, everybody freaked out and what did they do? They took the military industrial complex and turned it into the military, scientific industrial complex. They threw ungodly amounts of money into programs that basically took over colleges and science to try and meet the Russians where they were.

Now we're going to see more and more money and resources pushed towards AI, a program that doesn't particularly work, that most people don't actually want. And like you said, it probably is going to put a lot of people out of jobs. And on top of that, it's not even going to function in the way that it's being promised to function.

So it's only going to make things worse, which is the self-defeating cycle that we've seen take place over time, and it's only going to get worse until somebody stands up and calls this for what it is.

NICK HAUSELMAN - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Your assessment of where we are technologically has gotten me thinking a little bit, parallel to what you [00:05:00] were saying, what is progress, then, if we've gotten to the point where we have these iPhones, we have these things and so it's well, what will we be expecting the next thing to be? What is the Sputnik moment, really? And it's we have to dig into Star Trek stuff where we need to have hovering crafts and we need to have star travel. This is what Musk is trying to talk about now anyway, right? Is that the real frontier? Because how else can technology really benefit us or help us live better lives? And I think maybe that would be your focus in terms of how technology supposed to work, side by side with humans.

Is that sort of the idea? What else can it do? Can it be like cleaning our house for us? Is that what we're looking at?

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: And Nick, one of the things is I want to point out, because what you're bringing up right now are luxuries. You know what I mean? And I'm not going to dismiss how luxuries have changed people's lives. The feminist movement would not have been made possible if we didn't suddenly have luxuries that would have [00:06:00] created free time, that they weren't bogged down by having to do these things. And there have been great leaps in terms of social progress that have been tied to technology.

But what we're talking about now is like, are you going to be able to go in and ask AI to make a video that makes you laugh? You know what I mean? Or, kills some time. It should be about making lives actually better. And what have we seen from AI, Nick? We've seen it give falsified quote unquote hallucinations that tell people to drink poison or basically hurt themselves.

And so it's a product that isn't what it purports to be. Most people don't actually understand it. It has almost like a religious type connotation to it. Now we're just supposed to believe that these people who aren't even able to create anything worth a shit, that they're going to make the thing that's going to get us out of all these crises -- economic crises, political crises, health crises, [00:07:00] mental health crises. On top of that, the climate change crisis. And it's not working. And it's not going to work particularly with these people in charge.

And the bigger problem here, Nick -- and right before we started recording it came out that the DeepSeek program had been hit with a massive cyber attack, right? Which is obviously retaliation for it coming in and disrupting the tech market, disrupting the stock market. This type of thing, I would not be shocked if it has government-level coordination for it.

And it's got me thinking, it's starting to feel more and more if we do have a World War Three, what we're actually looking at is corporations going to war with each other, right? And it's what happened in the World Wars previously, in the major conflicts before, but this would be a more explicit version of that, which is using state power and military power and all those other sort of apparatuses in [00:08:00] order to engage in corporate warfare and espionage.

And that feels a lot like the direction that we're heading in with this thing, suddenly hitting and disrupting things immediately. And then there being this consequence to it.

The end of America's global dominance Part 1 - The New Statesman - Air Date 1-8-25

ROBERT D. KAPLAN: Since the end of the Cold War, the quality of the presidency has declined, in terms of presidential instinct. We've had George W. Bush, who may have been the worst president of the last few decades. Obama, who is a mediocrity. Clinton was a mediocrity. And then there's Trump, who is a world historical figure because he's so different.

So the quality of presidential instinct has gone down -- significantly.

Then there's the other thing that nobody writes about or talks about, but which is 80 percent of foreign policy, and that's the bureaucracy. Not just the secretaries of state and defense, but the deputy [00:09:00] secretaries, the undersecretaries, the assistant secretaries of which there are many.

America has been an empire since 1945, and it's this layered bureaucracy that runs the empire. And under Trump, as I argue in the piece, this bureaucracy went downhill dramatically between 2017 and 2021 and is set to go down dramatically again, because the quality of people that Trump appoints, whatever you may think of the quality under Biden, another mediocrity, was much higher under all the previous presidents, with the exception of Trump, and we can go into that if you want.

KATE LAMBLE - HOST, NEW STATESMAN: Yeah, what's the difference in Trump's second term? He's already been president for four years. What's different this time around?

ROBERT D. KAPLAN: This time around, Trump is more experienced, he's more vindictive. He's got people [00:10:00] around him, many of whom have no experience in the bureaucracy, many of whom hate the very bureaucracies they've been empowered to run.

And we're going to see a decline in American power in the 80 percent that's run by the bureaucracy. As far as the presidential instinct decisions, that could go in either way. Trump is very unpredictable because he has no well-thought-out worldview.

KATE LAMBLE - HOST, NEW STATESMAN: You talk about the political power, but you also write about the economics in America at the moment and how that's in decline. Tell us about that.

ROBERT D. KAPLAN: Well, in 1945, when World War II ended, half of the world's manufacturing capacity was in the United States. And that lasted for decades. One of the reasons why Kissinger and Nixon could do so much is because America was much more powerful then. Now America accounts for only [00:11:00] 16 percent of the world's manufacturing capacity.

Then there's the debt, which is about 36 trillion dollars and growing dramatically at about a trillion dollars a year. And neither party, neither the Republicans nor the Democrats, have anywhere near the maturity and fiscal discipline to deal with the debt. It's amazing.

When you watch Congress debate the budget, it's like the last days of ancient Rome. There is nobody in the room who's even remotely responsible. They just want to spend and spend and spend, each party on different things. And this debt accumulates and takes up more of the budget and there's less money to spend on defense, on social issues. It's like a building problem.

And as I lay out in the piece, this is how empires decline over history. It's [00:12:00] not just ancient Rome. It's most empires, throughout history, have declined because of economic reasons and because of reasons related indirectly to economic reasons.

KATE LAMBLE - HOST, NEW STATESMAN: If we're talking about an empire falling, you said that the US has been an empire since 1945. Is its decline inevitable? Can it be stopped if someone decided to?

ROBERT D. KAPLAN: No, it's absolutely not inevitable. I make two points in the piece: That America definitely is in decline. But also, I point out that China is in a steeper decline and that Russia is in an even steeper decline. So decline is relative. America could decline and yet its power vis a vis Russia and China, even under terrible leadership, could increase, because it's all relative. There is no absolute here. So we're really facing a world where all the great powers are declining.

Will France and Germany's woes affect the rest of Europe? | Counting the Cost - Al Jazeera English - Air Date 12-12-24

ADRIAN FINIGHAN - HOST, COUNTING THE COST: [00:13:00] What's gone wrong? Why was Barnier's budget so contentious?

MATTHIAS BAUER: Yeah, I think France has spilled on too many fiscal deficits in the past. If you look at the country from the bird's eye perspective, France's biggest challenge today is its oversized government. Public spending accounts for nearly 60% of GDP, six-zero, right? Termed by one of the highest tax burdens in Europe.

At the same time, many Frenchmen amongst them, many business owners, they criticize that for them to be turned on this enormous amount of government spending is underwhelming including essential services like health care, education, public infrastructure, but also filling off. Unemployment, which is among the highest in the EU and the youth unemployment rate of some 18 percent also amongst the highest in Europe.

So, by many measures, France [00:14:00] operates and it's operated for many years now as what I would describe as A socialist economy with a dysfunctional state deeply embedded in pretty much every aspect of economic life. Now Michelle Barney and his government, they dared to attempt to address these issues rightfully.

So with, however, relatively moderate. fiscal reforms. But even though these reforms would just have been a very tiny drop on an increasingly hot stone, there was political resistance to austerity measures on the one hand, but also new taxes that derailed these efforts.

ADRIAN FINIGHAN - HOST, COUNTING THE COST: All right, let's move to Germany, then.

Its economy expected to grow, what, 1 percent next year. What's gone wrong there?

MATTHIAS BAUER: Well, the German economy is still doing better to put it that way. Let me stress that things still look good for Germany when you compare the country to France. So, Germany remains [00:15:00] one of the most advanced economies of the world, reflected by a strong and very diverse manufacturing sector.

An increasingly diverse services sector economy with high exports still, and I would also say an okay GDP per capita when compared to other EU countries, especially France and yet my mother country. I am German by passport is now also facing what I would describe a crisis of dysfunctional government services, plus high energy costs, plus economic stagnation.

If you like. And that's also driven by global developments a continuous relative economic decline when you compare Germany, but also other EU countries, including France to other parts of the world.

ADRIAN FINIGHAN - HOST, COUNTING THE COST: How will France and Germany's economic problems impact the rest of the EU? Could we see economic power shifting elsewhere within the EU?

To what extent is that already happening?

MATTHIAS BAUER: They obviously [00:16:00] have. A lot of economic power, given that their industries are deeply intertwined in EU value chains. So if their economies perform weekly or increasingly, that will, of course, also disrupt value chains elsewhere in Europe as concerns political power, very hard to say.

I would not call it a crisis. Okay. A political crisis that we currently see in France and and also Germany. Okay. I think it's normal that governments break up. There will be new elections and so on and so forth. But this will obviously have an impact on how both countries engage in the European Council.

So, these countries have typically been there. In the driver's seat when it comes to EU policymaking, and there are other countries like Poland with the next council presidency that might want to step in, but they still do not have a clear agenda for EU policymaking.

ADRIAN FINIGHAN - HOST, COUNTING THE COST: Matthias just briefly, the EU already lags behind the US and China in [00:17:00] terms of competitiveness with President elect Trump threatening to impose tariffs on on imports from both China and the EU.

I mean, how is that going to exacerbate the problems?

MATTHIAS BAUER: You are right. There is this huge investment, technological and, you know, produce being competitiveness gap that has been rising For more than a decade now, and it's very, very difficult to address this gap to close it without meaningful structural reforms that however, need to take place at the national level in EU member states.

Not so much at the EU level. And here we need to talk about bold tax reforms, simplification of tax code, getting rid of subsidies that mainly go to sectors that we would consider. Disfunctional or unproductive. And this is a stark difference when you compare what is happening in the United States, where the economy is generally much less reliant on government spending [00:18:00] direct subsidies and a government that is not so much.

Inclined to apply a dirichist approach, command and control regulation that we see in large parts of Europe's Especially in France, but also increasingly in germany

Putin faces 'economic dilemma' amid Trump sanctions threats | World in 10 - Times Radio - Air Date 1-25-25

DAVID LUBIN : The idea of the U. S. using direct sanctions on Russian trade with the U. S. to change Russia's behavior is a bit laughable. Bilateral trade between Russia and the U. S. is pretty close to zero. In 2023, U. S. exports to Russia were about 600 million dollars. U. S. Imports from Russia were about 4. 5 bibillion dollars. In the context of the fact that the Russian economy, nominal GDP, is around 2 trillion, there's just nothing there. There's just no bilateral trade sanctions that will make Putin blink. So, the actual direct threat of additional sanctions on Russia is kind of meaningless. [00:19:00]

What's meaningful, I think, is the body language behind Trump's statements. And, I think the important bit of context here is the fact that during the course of 2024, Donald Trump on a couple of occasions, in an interview with Bloomberg, in an interview with Tucker Carlson, talked about a grand strategic objective of his. Which is to 'ununite'—his words, not mine—to ununite Russia from China. In effect, what Trump has been aiming at in these comments is a kind of photographic negative image of what Richard Nixon did by prizing China away from the Soviet Union in the 1970s. So, Trump's the, logic is that, Trump considers his main strategic rival to be China. And he just wants to weaken China by severing its alliance or its partnership with Russia, and [00:20:00] therefore, that sort of leads him to, has led him to express warm thoughts, warm views about Russia.

Now, what I think he's doing this week is trying to compensate for the fact that he spent a good chunk of 2024 and before. saying more or less friendly things about Vladimir Putin and Russia. What he needs to do, in other words, is to try and reinvigorate his capacity to negotiate with Putin. And so threatening to impose sanctions, threatening to get tough if Putin doesn't come to the negotiating table, is a necessary thing for him to do now, because in the past, Trump has spent a lot of political capital sort of aligning himself with Vladimir Putin.

LUKE JONES - HOST, WORLD IN 10: So is the real threat perhaps to countries rather than directly with Russia, but countries that have seen trade with Russia rise like China, [00:21:00] as you say, India, the Middle Eastern states, even some of those former Soviet states in Central Asia? Is that who these threats are directed at?

DAVID LUBIN : I hope so, because if you want to put additional pressure on the Russian economy, the most effective way of doing that by far, I think, is to work hard to further limit Russia's access to hard currency revenues. Before the war, before the invasion in early 2022, about 50 percent of Russia's oil exports, its energy exports, went to countries that pay in convertible currencies. And now it's about 10%. So, in effect, Russia's hard currency income has gone down from about 300 billion dollars a year to about 60 billion dollars a year. The difference has been [00:22:00] made up by non convertible currency income flows in the form of the renminbi or the Indian rupee or in rubles themselves, from non traditional trading partners.

Now, that gives the United States and Europe a strategic advantage over Russia, because the more that Russia receives non convertible currencies in exchange for its energy sales, the more vulnerable the Russian economy becomes. Because, although you could say export income is export income, you know, if Russia generates renminbi in exchange for its oil revenue, oil sales, then what's the difference? No, it's a significant difference because it's still the case that Russian citizens form their view about inflation, about the state of the economy, [00:23:00] that their confidence comes not from the rubles exchange rate against the renminbi or the rubles exchange rate against the rupee, but from the rubles exchange rate against the dollar.

And the fact that foreign hard currency revenues have become so depleted has put pressure on the ruble exchange rate against the dollar, which reached over 100-to-110 earlier this year, strengthened recently. But the point is that the less Russia can depend on hard currency revenues, the more vulnerable it becomes, and the more intense Vladimir Putin's dilemma gets.

And what I'm trying to get at in saying that is the following: the more depreciated the ruble gets against the dollar, the more it weakens against the dollar, the more Russians start to form expectations about higher inflation in the future. And therefore, the central [00:24:00] bank has to react to that by raising interest rates. And, there's a chart—I wrote a piece for, it's all on the Chatham House website, a couple of weeks ago, everyone can go and look at it—but there's a chart there that shows the very close relationship between the inflation-adjusted interest rate in Russia and the ruble-dollar exchange rate.

So, what the West should want to be doing is to do whatever it can to make the ruble-dollar exchange rate go higher and higher. In other words, to make the ruble weaker. Because that puts more and more pressure on Elvira Nabiullina, the central bank's president, to raise interest rates in order to control inflation.

And the fact that interest rates are so high in Russia, because the ruble has been under so much stress during the course of 2024, the fact that ruble interest rates are so high, has put an enormous stress into the political system. The Prime minister, the [00:25:00] group of Russian industrialists, lots of civil society figures have been criticizing the Central Bank for having excessively tight monetary policy and threatening what would amount to a kind of stagflation in Russia. In other words, a simultaneous high inflation and weak growth.

Now, the dilemma that this presents to Vladimir Putin is as follows: Putin for many, many years, well before the invasion in 2022, has always backed Nabiullina. He's always stated his preference for low inflation because he believes that high inflation would threaten his legitimacy. But the cost now of backing Nabiullina, the cost of pursuing a low inflation Russian economy is becoming higher and higher. And so the [00:26:00] dilemma that Vladimir Putin faces is, does he stick with his preference for low inflation at the cost of a very weak economy, or does he let inflation rip as President Erdogan has done for many years in Turkey, but allowing the Russian economy to accelerate because monetary policy isn't as tight as it's been recently.

The more the West can intensify that dilemma for President Putin, the more difficult life becomes for him. But even then, the link between sanctions on the one hand and a change in the behavior of the country receiving the sanctions, is really pretty tenuous. Sanctions is, often described as a spray and pray strategy. And I don't think that there's any [00:27:00] perfect sanction that can predictably change the course of the war, that can predictably change Putin's behavior. So, all that we can do really is acknowledge that an intensification of sanctions doesn't really change the spray and pray quality of them. But it might intensify the dilemma that Putin faces and therefore help to bring him to the negotiating table.

But, if I can just repeat the point, what Trump wants to get out of Putin is difficult to discern because if Trump's ultimate goal is, as I said, to ununite Russia from China, then the amount of pressure that Trump wants to put on Putin might be limited. And that's really the test. That's really what we have to wait and see, whether [00:28:00] the goal that Trump seems to have of ununiting Russia from China Is something that supersedes any effort to bring this war to a conclusion during the course of 2025.

Goodnight, Pax Americana: Neoliberalism and the decline of the US Empire w/ Radhika Desai Part 1 - The Red Nation Podcast - Air Date 9-22-23

RADHIKA DESAI: People in the United States love to say, well, we are not an empire, we don't have colonies, etc. Which is, again, not strictly speaking true, because as Daniel Iberwa has pointed out in a recent book called How to Hide an Empire, actually, the United States has a lot of colonies. like Hawaii, for example, or Puerto Rico and many other such colonies. So as I was saying, the United States has all these colonies, so in that sense it's not really a non colonial, but a number of particular American historians actually see the process of the expansion of the westward expansion of the United States as a process of internal colonization, as some of you may be well aware.

So this process of internal colonization continued all the way until about 1870 when the[00:29:00]

And it was only then that it began to look for 1890s, pardon me, and only then when it began to look for other colonies, it realized that the rest of the world had more or less been accounted for, by other countries and therefore it could not really acquire any colonies. a territorial empire anymore so in that sense, I think that what you, the, indigenous struggles that you're referring to, and also, of course, the struggles of other peoples in the United States, black people, Latino people, et cetera, these are all, I mean, in a certain sense, the United States in that sense, especially in the neoliberal period has gone back to be, to being ruled more or less as an empire where the welfare of ordinary citizens seems to be the.

largely absent from the national agenda beyond sort of managing resistance in opposition. So I would say that, in that sense the indigenous struggles now, you see in Canada, and the U. S. of course are similar in one sense, they have both taken over lands of indigenous people, but the process has been a little different in [00:30:00] Canada, where it was less of a kind of exterminist type of thing, where in the United States, the indigenous population, which was actually larger compared to the indigenous populations of the territory, which would be called Canada.

Yeah. But they were systematically exterminated. So today, as a proportion of the American population, the indigenous population is relatively low. Whereas in Canada, it is a little higher. It's like maybe four or five percent, and it is rising today. And I think part of the reason is because in, in Canada, we got colonialism on the cheap.

In the sense that the British simply said, yes, And, we agree with some treaties or whatever. We agree to respect you, et cetera. But these treaties are not. were not fully respected but nevertheless these kind of treaties were made and now they are being honored only in the breach and so we have this indigenous resistance and, so on.

So, in Canada, by the way, the whole question of indigenous land ownership is actually very material economic issue because Like the United States, [00:31:00] Canada also relies a lot on extraction and agriculture and therefore land based activities. So in that sense, the indigenous demand for their own land is very important and has the potential to destabilize a lot of economic activity in Canada.

Yeah, because If, how can you open a vast mining operation if you don't have rights to the land or logging or for that matter? So, there is a lot of focus in Canada on the land issue where indigenous peoples are concerned. But I would say that, that tends to leave out the struggles of indigenous peoples, which as you rightly point out, many of whom are integrated into the labour force.

So they have constituted, it's not, you know, To me, when Marx talks about primitive accumulation, that is to say, separating people from the land, which is something that happened in Scottish enclosures, but also happened on a huge scale in the settler colonies in particular, where indigenous populations were displaced.

And so on and, put on smaller pieces of land for reserves following, [00:32:00] which of course, is a system that South Africa began to practice in the post second World War period as well. So, this kind of system, it is, so when Marx talked about primitive accumulation, what is, or rather original accumulation as.

As he called it in in German. This original accumulation was always about two things. One was to take land away, which is what everybody focuses on, but the other was to create a landless proletariat, which would have, a group of people or vast masses of people who had no option but to work for other people because their access to their livelihood, which is the land, which, you know, every.

People that and that we have known in history had some original attachment to some of the our piece of land and they may have been wars over it, etc. But it was there and this has been broken and we now take it for granted that you know if you open a factory that somehow people will come and work for you.

But this was not [00:33:00] necessarily a given. If people had access to alternative means of livelihood and you weren't offering them. A better one. Why should people come and work for you? So this compulsion to work for others is only created by this process of dispossession, as you may call it, and that was also, that was the purpose of secular colonialism.

NICK ESTES - HOST, THE RED NATION PODCAST: I've wrestled with this question a lot because I think, one of the more insightful texts that I've read and I teach is called empire's tracks and, It's by, Manu Karuga, who actually tracks westward expansion and uses Lenin's theory of imperialism to understand he's not just studying trains, but he's studying like railroad expat expansion and the investment that happens and it's a very modern, capitalist kind of enterprise.

it's not to say that the indigenous resistance to it is, somehow like they're, Bolsheviks, but, it does understand that this is a process of primitive accumulation and it's confronting capital and that's how indigenous nations are made in relation to.

The [00:34:00] United States and we're currently positioned and I think, I've heard you say this in other sort of interviews and podcasts. about how the sort of postmodern kind of focus on, just culture and the culture of settler colonialism, the culture of imperialism tends to miss this economic side.

And that goes, both ways in terms of how resources are extracted, but then also how people are put into and forced to sell their labor, within a capitalist system. I will say that. Some indigenous nations in the past and presently have tried to de link themselves from these kinds of economies with various success and failure.

the Navajo Nation tried to nationalize its. Natural resources, uranium, oil and gas and ended in a sort of Senate sponsored coup against the president at the time. So it was like a mini, opposing of, yeah very similar. And actually around that same time period, I think it happened in the early eighties.

So you do have these sort of alternative paths are being drawn out and attempted in these [00:35:00] projects. And I want to, talk a little bit. Oh, I guess the final point on that I want to say is in British Columbia, and this is where, worth studying is, there's British Columbia is not treated at all.

There's no Canada has no sort of legal like foundation in British Columbia. And indigenous nations have sought, alternative economic partnerships with countries like China. Or, we just did an interview with a native Hawaiian activists who, are saying. How dare the United States come in and say who are friends and enemies are our entire islands are militarized with military bases.

Expecting us to be the front lines of some kind of great powers conflict. And the same goes with Guam, which is seen as a, an island aircraft carrier betrussing or containing China. But I also wanted to ask you a little bit about how does that work in terms of.

Your theories of imperialism. When we think about the sort of contradiction of like [00:36:00] how the United States is so dependent on China in terms of its economy and other sort of imperialist powers are so dependent on, China for its economy, but yet have militarily surrounded it. And it's like, when they're policing ship lanes, when they're surveilling ship lanes with this Aukus agreement, it's What are these ships carrying? They're carrying goods to San Francisco. They're carrying goods to Vancouver. So how do you, how do we make sense of this? This sort of contradictory move where on one hand it's like we're anti China and we want to subvert the sort of Chinese economy and, we're going to militarize the shipping lanes build military bases completely surrounding and containing China while at the same time depending on it economically to produce the goods, the consumer goods that we need for our economies.

Yanis Varoufakis on Cloud Capital vs AI: DeepSeek, Technofeudalism, Capitalism and the New Cold War - DiEM25 - Air Date 1-26-24

YANIS VAROUFAKIS - HOST, DIEM 25: The gist of DeepSeek's arrival on the AI scene and the carnage in the American stock exchanges is a sudden transition from proprietary to open source technology. It is therefore no great wonder that the moment DeepSeek [00:37:00] became the most downloaded app on the Apple store, it pulverized the market capitalization of the hitherto overinflated US big tech stocks.

How did this happen exactly? How is it that a private commodified service is suddenly offered for free? And does this mean that techno federalism is in trouble to begin with? It's important to note that AI was never a proprietary technology in itself. The underlying code of all AI companies was always open source.

What made American AI a quasi private commodity? Was the way in which these models were trained using huge amounts of privatized data, where I say privatized, you should translate Stolen data. Your data. My data. There was a Google memo that was leaked in 2017 that was widely discussed and refuted but it was a harbinger of what happened with DeepSeek.

In that [00:38:00] memo we read the following words If an open source large language model, it said trained for a few million dollars, comes to outperform a proprietary model. Then there's going to be trouble. There will be no firewall, the memo continues, even to safeguard OpenAI. That's what happened. DeepSeek pierced the United States AI company's bubble by decommodifying the results of the model's training and doing it at a tiny, tiny cost to itself.

Shifting the results of AI trained models from behind a paywall to the public realm. Within days since the release of the latest version of DeepSeek, developers around the world started building their own models On top of deep seeks. This was the nightmare of american big tech ai service providers who have been offering the results of prompts as a commodity in the form of subscriptions You [00:39:00] see deep seek type applications can now produce high quality translations for free That's just an example.

And in so doing, they undermine the business model of companies like Deeple, the German company. In the broader scheme of things, this means that the morsels of cloud capital that Europe owned, like Deeple, essentially have lost their market value. Nevertheless, and this is a huge nevertheless, it is only AI as a commodity that has lost its grossly exaggerated market price or value.

In sharp contrast, cloud capital utilized as Amazon, Meta, Google, and so on have been utilizing it. That is not as a commodity producing piece of tech, but as a produced means of behavioral modification. That business model is not at all threatened by companies like DeepSeek. And since techno feudalism is powered by cloud capital working that way, rather [00:40:00] than commodity like AI services of the chat GPT 4 or 5 type, our techno feudal order is not threatened by competitors such as DeepSeek.

To help understand the difference between cloud capital and AI based commodified services, it helps to compare and contrast Alexa, take Amazon's Alexa, and OpenAI's Chat GPT. Alexa is not offering you a commodified service. It is your free, pretend slave. Unlike GPT 405, you do not pay a subscription to Amazon for the right to order Alexa, to order your milk, or to switch off your lights.

Rather, you train Alexa to train you, to train it, to know you, so that it wins you over, it wins your trust, with good recommendations. So that it can ultimately modify your behavior, so that it can encourage [00:41:00] you to buy a commodity from amazon. com with Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon, retaining up to 40 percent of the price you pay for a book or an electric bicycle.

Money that will be retained as cloud rent by the owner of Amazon Jeff Bezos in short and this is very important The work that Alexa performs for you is not a commodity that you buy unlike chat gpt Which works to sell you a commodity even in a subscription form to put it in different words Once more chat gpt is subject to market competition and therefore vulnerable to companies like DeepSeek.

But Alexa is not. This is why OpenAI, ChatGPT's maker, is seriously damaged by the emergence of DeepSeek, but Amazon is not. That's my basic point. Cloud capital is in a league of its own, beyond market competition, from DeepSeek like [00:42:00] upstarts. Because its power lies in its capacity to modify our behavior and remove us from any market. For example, to shift us from real markets to cloud feeds like Amazon or Alibaba. To wrap this up, in conclusion, cloud's capital capacity to drive techno fidelism is not challenged by companies like DeepSeek. Only companies like OpenAI, which invested so much, and so foolishly I would add, in providing a commodified service, these companies stand to lose enormously.

This, I believe, is yet another sign that capitalism is dead at the hand of cloud capital, while techno feudalism is going from strength to strength. And as it does so, it fuels even further the new Cold War between the United States and China, which in my book, Techno Feudalism, What Killed Capitalism, I have explained away, I have explained this new Cold War as the almighty clash between these two huge concentrations of cloud capital, the American dollar [00:43:00] denominated super cloudalist power, and the Chinese one denominated super cloudalist power.

Now, speaking of this new Cold War, which I have argued is mostly fueled by the clash between American and Chinese cloud capital, I wonder what impact DeepSeek's success will have on the United States government, not just Trump, but the whole gamut of the American state and its government, Silicon Valley and Washington DC Until very recently and the deep sea arrival on the scene, they had convinced themselves that America had the huge AI lead over China.

Now that the tiny Chinese company has destroyed that confidence by producing on a shoestring better AI tech and services than Silicon Valley had imagined possible. I don't know about you, but I can almost hear the wearing of the cogs and wheels inside the heads of people in authority both on the east coast and the [00:44:00] west coast of the United States as they are thinking, trying to understand, to predict if the Chinese can do this out of the blue.

As DeepSeek did, only two days ago. What else can the Chinese do tomorrow? It is reminiscent, isn't it, of the Sputnik moment. So, it will be interesting to see how Donald Trump reacts to this threat to companies like OpenAI. Especially since Elon Musk understood some time ago, quite presently, I should say, and has spoken out against companies like OpenAI.

He seems to have understood the folly of commodifying AI services rather than going full on techno feudal. Goodness only knows what happens in a White House containing both the thoughts of Elon Musk and someone like Donald Trump. These are indeed turning out to be interesting times, of course, in the traditional Chinese proverbial [00:45:00] sense of the phrase.

Note from the Editor on soft landings vs crash landings

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips starting with The Muckrake Political Podcast discussing the international competition through the lens of AI development. The New Statesman put the present in proper historical context. Al Jazeera English looked at various issues facing France and Germany. Times Radio speculated on the economic struggles facing Russia and the potential impact on Putin. The Red Nation Podcast discussed the colonial possessions of the US and Canada. And the Democracy In Europe Movement 2025 looked at the destabilizing impact of the release of the DeepSeek AI model from China. And those were just the Top Takes; there's a lot more in the Deeper Dive sections.

But first, a reminder that this show is produced with the support of our members who get access to bonus episodes and enjoy all of our shows without ads. To support our work and have those bonus episodes delivered seamlessly to the new members-only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show at BestOfTheLeft.Com/Support (there's a link in the show notes), through our Patreon [00:46:00] page, or from right inside the Apple Podcast app. And as always, if regular membership isn't in the cards for you, shoot me an email requesting a financial hardship and membership, because we don't let a lack of funds stand in the way of hearing more information.

And we're also trying something new and offering you the opportunity to submit your comments or questions on upcoming topics, so you can potentially join the conversation as it happens. Next up, we're doing an analysis of how the media is shifting and mostly capitulating to Trump, followed by a deep dive into the age of oligarchy that is rising right along with the right wing faux populist movements around the world. So get your comments or questions in now for those topics. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at 202-999-3991. We're also findable on the privacy-focused messaging app Signal with the handle BestoftheLeft.01. There's a link in the show notes for that. Or you can simply email me to [email protected].

Now as for today's [00:47:00] topic: I was strongly reminded of a piece in Vanity Fair by James Pogue titled, "Steve Bannon has called his army to do battle, no matter who wins in November," and this is something that we discussed in greater depth and detail on the bonus show for members. But in his article, the writer speaks with Obama's foreign policy advisor, Ben Rhodes. And, if you're not a foreign policy nerd, then you may not know Ben Rhodes, but he wrote a book titled After the Fall. So you don't have to worry that he might be some pollyannish, hope and change, a miracle, come out on top if we're just our best selves, kind of a person, right? He sees the same writing on the wall that we're talking about here today.

But he says something that I think sums up a big piece of the political realignment and the current state of the general debate. The right and left is getting a little bit mixed these days. I've been saying [00:48:00] it makes people seasick, myself included. And so this is part of that discussion.

And So Ben, talking about the differences between people like him and people like Steve Bannon, who both have very similar critical perspectives on some of the imperial structures of the US -- like I said, a little bit of a realignment makes you a little bit seasick that an Obama guy and a Trump guy would see eye to eye on anything, but that is the state of play these days. And so speaking about the differences between someone like him and someone like Bannon, Ben says, "the divide is between people who want to try to bring things down to a soft landing and people who want to blow it up. The challenge is that nobody has shown me you can blow it up absent a war and a mass disruptive event."

So the argument is to blow up one thing, but not have an idea of what to do instead, or not be honest with people [00:49:00] about the horrors of the transition period. When you put it that way, that doesn't sound very enticing, I don't think. However, in terms of campaigning and riling up energy from frustrated people who are frustrated for good reason, saying generally, "Well, the system is fucked, and it needs to be torn down." That's a much more powerful rallying cry than the alternative.

In the realm of international politics, Ben Rhodes assumes that the US is in decline, saying that he'd like to bring us down to a soft landing. And to a reasonable person, that sounds a whole lot better than blowing the system up and crashing.

But when you're rallying frustrated people who have good reason for their frustrations, saying the system is fucked and we need to tear it down makes for a much better campaign slogan. And [00:50:00] that sentiment, that basic divide copied and pasted again and again onto each policy issue, not just foreign policy and international economics, I think, goes a long way to explaining the political dynamics between, generally, left and right, MAGA Republicans and Democrats.

It's always easier to tear down than it is to build. And attempting to manage a decline, I mean, that may be one of the hardest things of all, because how does a party rally supporters and excite voters to keep them in power long enough to actually achieve that soft landing?

It is an absolute recipe for oppositional populism that will harness the inevitable frustration with either ridiculous promises of national resurgence, nihilistic "burn it all down" energy, or both, which seems to be what we've got.

SECTION A: AMERICAN DECLINE

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now we'll continue to dive deeper on six topics [00:51:00] today. Next up, section A, American Decline, followed by section B, China, section C, Russia, section D, France, section E, Corporate Control, and section F, What Comes Next.

How Empires Fall and Why the US is Next - uncivilized - Air Date 12-28-24

TALA KADDOURA - HOST, UNCIVILIZED: Companies buying out the housing market, insurance companies making healthcare unaffordable, politicians taking money from lobbies to protect corporate interests and fill their own pockets. And the working class is well aware.

ARCHIVE NEWS CLIP: Affording wealth is so harmful, so unethical, so rage inducing. Billionaires should not exist.

So you talk about teacher salary, 2, 000 in rent, 400 car payment, you got insurance, you got groceries, electricity, like, I don't understand how people are affording life right now.

For five stitches,

3, 800. What?

Like, it's so freaking hard to live here.

North America is one big scam.

TALA KADDOURA - HOST, UNCIVILIZED: And then there's the internal social and political decay.

People have become disenchanted with the illusion of American democracy, of [00:52:00] its promises of equality, of equal opportunity for all, as long as you pick yourself up by your bootstraps.

ARCHIVE NEWS CLIP: You can see a sea of people all united under one banner. Cause they are protesting for racial equality. The murder of a healthcare executive has led to online popularity for the shooter.

Mangione has emerged in some circles as a sympathetic figure fighting the system.

TALA KADDOURA - HOST, UNCIVILIZED: All this leads to political instability, economic trouble, and social unrest. Which weakens the empire at its core.

But an empire is bigger than its center. It's a network of vassal states serving the core's interests and keeping all those entities in check is done through both soft power and hard power. That brings us to symptom number two. To understand soft power and how it plays into imperial decline. Let's look at the Ottomans.

ARCHIVE DOCUMENTARY CLIP: It was a huge empire dominated by a Turkish dynasty that had its origins in Asia minor.

TALA KADDOURA - HOST, UNCIVILIZED: The Ottoman Empire was one of the most [00:53:00] powerful and enduring empires in history, spanning three continents at its height. It was a hub of cultural and scientific innovation, producing advancements in medicine, astronomy, architecture, and engineering that changed the world.

ARCHIVE DOCUMENTARY CLIP: They ruled a

considerable mix of peoples and faiths. There was no great history of ethnic tension, even though there was a history of massively complicated ethnic and confessional coexistence.

TALA KADDOURA - HOST, UNCIVILIZED: It lasted almost 600 years. One factor that contributed to its demise was its waning influence over the peoples and territories it had under its control, also known as the loss of soft power.

Soft power is about being more persuasive than coercive, about getting people to comply without using force. In the case of the Ottomans, it was a delicate balance of diplomacy and cultural influence, but over time, the empire's ability to foster loyalty among diverse groups was eroding. Aided by rising nationalism within [00:54:00] these communities.

ARCHIVE DOCUMENTARY CLIP: The Greeks were the first to rebel against the Ottoman shackles.

The minute you start getting a political world, this system is going to break down. And that is what happens in the 19th century. And that is the great conundrum for the empire.

TALA KADDOURA - HOST, UNCIVILIZED: People stopped buying into the vision of the empire. and began to break off and pursue their own interests.

Now, the U. S. has been really good at soft power. It began after World War II, when the U. S. positioned itself as a global leader promoting democracy, economic growth, and cultural influence.

ARCHIVE NEWS CLIP: Joe's the king because he can buy more with his wages than any other worker on the globe.

It is the most important idea that the United States has contributed to the world.

Citizens of every rank can expect to have a better, richer, happier life.

TALA KADDOURA - HOST, UNCIVILIZED: It helped rebuild war torn Europe. set up major global institutions where it continues to hold significant power, and has exported music, television, and pop culture across the world for decades. [00:55:00] And the messaging of this soft power has been consistent and clear.

RONALD REAGAN: Shining city upon a hill. After 200 years, she's still a beacon. Still a magnet for all who must have freedom.

TALA KADDOURA - HOST, UNCIVILIZED: But for soft power to work, for people to buy into the fantasy and want to participate, They need to see credibility and moral consistency. Now, just to be clear, the U. S. has violated the principles it preaches since its founding, not to mention since its emergence as a global hegemon.

It seems the majority of people were willing to overlook that and buy into the American dream. But the illusion is falling apart. At home, the land of democracy, liberty, and human rights hasn't kept up the best image in recent years.

And it's not any better abroad. The U. S. has spearheaded and overseen devastating wars, crippling debt, human rights violations, and environmental damage across the world, which has made it hard to take preaching of democracy and freedom [00:56:00] seriously.

ARCHIVE NEWS CLIP: America no longer charts a course and therefore has lost all rights to set it and even more so to impose it on others.

TALA KADDOURA - HOST, UNCIVILIZED: Disillusionment with American values is growing and in its panic the empire continues to thrash and bully to stay relevant. That's where hard power comes in. and brings us to the third symptom of the fall of an empire. This one is best illustrated by the Soviet Union.

Now, the USSR ideologically rejected the idea of imperialism, but the reality is that it looked and acted like an empire.

Speaker 262: The Soviet Communist Party has not faced a serious internal threat to its political rule since the 1920s.

TALA KADDOURA - HOST, UNCIVILIZED: There was a centralized authority overseeing expansion and control of a collection of republics and satellite states, where movements for autonomy were suppressed.

What tethered these states together was a unified ideology, communism. But it was also hard power, military might. [00:57:00] And that costs money.

ARCHIVE DOCUMENTARY CLIP: It is here, in Red Square, that the superpower Soviet Union holds its military parades, displaying its might for all the world to see.

TALA KADDOURA - HOST, UNCIVILIZED: At its strongest, the Soviet Union had five million soldiers stationed around the Union, and pursued wars and conquests to maintain and expand its reach.

Then there's all the money spent on an arms race during the Cold War. Money spent on propping up parties in proxy wars across the world. And money spent on wars like Afghanistan, a protracted 10 year long conflict that cost them 50 billion dollars.

ARCHIVE NEWS CLIP: The superpower from the north occupies Afghanistan with more than 100, 000 troops.

A modern mechanized army.

TALA KADDOURA - HOST, UNCIVILIZED: Eventually, the The cost of keeping the empire in check became unmanageable, and the economy took a hit. By the late 80s, people within the Union were struggling with soaring poverty and a low quality of life, with no strategic wins to show for all that money spent. [00:58:00] Military and ideological overextension drained not only the economy, but public morale as well, until people got fed up.

ARCHIVE NEWS CLIP: In Moscow, the hammer and sickle is lowered for the last time.

TALA KADDOURA - HOST, UNCIVILIZED: Sounds familiar.

MICHAEL BERNIER: All estimates agree that the cost will be at least 1 trillion. The Bush administration never expected the war to drag on as long as it has.

The fall of Kabul to the Taliban marked an abrupt end to America's longest war. The war cost American taxpayers about 1 trillion.

TALA KADDOURA - HOST, UNCIVILIZED: The U. S. carried out long, brutal, expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. With nothing to show for it except instability, and devastation, and financial loss. Then there's the constant ideological wars. The war on communism, the war on drugs, the war on terror, the war on China and Russia. There's a constant boogeyman in the ether to justify U.

S. military spending. The U. S. maintains the most bases in the world at over [00:59:00] 700, and spends hundreds of billions of dollars on the military every year. More than the next 10 countries combined. It's funding Ukraine in its war against Russia. It might support Taiwan in a war against China. Billions of dollars spent, and we can't remember the last war the U.

S. has actually won. But last year, an undeniable awakening happened.

ARCHIVE NEWS CLIP: This has been a senseless and a deliberate slaughter, a genocide, and it is happening on our dime.

TALA KADDOURA - HOST, UNCIVILIZED: For over a year, Americans and the rest of the world have watched U. S. politicians from both sides of the aisle cheer on and fund the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza to the tune of billions of dollars. It has shattered the idea that the U. S. is a beacon of justice and human rights and irreversibly cemented the hypocrisy of American moral exceptionalism. The empire has never been so exposed. And it's shown Americans, who [01:00:00] back in the imperial core, continue to struggle to live decent, dignified lives, where all their tax money is going. And where it's definitely not.

The U. S. has been an empire since its very conception. From colonizing Native American land, to conquering territories overseas, to dominating world politics through global institutions, military might, corporate interests,

Of all the empires that have risen and fallen, none have come close to having the reach and power of the U. S. So the idea of it losing its hold over the world seems inconceivable. But while all these symptoms are unfolding, and the U. S. empire erodes from within and without, it's not doing so in a vacuum.

It does so in the middle of a global shift in geopolitics, in a world that's becoming increasingly multipolar. With countries choosing new allies, new frameworks for collaboration, even new currencies. The aim of the alliance is to challenge the economic and political monopoly of the West. All of which is not [01:01:00] good for the U.

S. See, the way the global system is designed is, in many ways, for the benefit of America. From reliance on the dollar, U. S. aid, and U. S. debt, to fear of U. S. sanctions, vetoes, and foreign intervention, we live in a world full of systems and institutions designed to prop up the U. S. and keep the rest of the world in check.

But these systems aren't going to live forever, because they're inherently unsustainable. They rely on the exploitation of peoples across the world and within the imperial core, and bank on them buying into the bit that all this is necessary. Is better for them and protects them.

And as life becomes more unaffordable, countries, more destabilized governments, more autocratic and our environment, more unlivable. People eventually wake up and that's usually the beginning of the end.

Richard Wolff on the BRICS countries replacing the US dollar in international trade - Community Church of Boston - Air Date 11-16-24

RICHARD WOLFF: Over the last 20 years, and particularly over the last five, uh, the countries [01:02:00] in the BRICS, and by the way, some others as well, have reduced their reliance on their use of the dollar.

You know, the dollar as the global currency was one of the results of World War II. When I pointed out a few minutes ago that all the competitors of the United States were pretty much destroyed in that world, in that war, and that we came out kind of top dog in that situation, that's what translated into making the dollar, quote, as good as gold.

It was something that every central bank of every one of the 180 countries in the world kept on reserve in their bank, uh, in order to show the world that that their currency was safe to use, because in any extremity, they could honor their currency by giving you dollars, which the world accepted as, quote unquote, as good as gold.

So for example, 30 years ago, something like 80%, [01:03:00] maybe 85 percent of world central banks held dollars as reserves. They held dollars, literally gold. and maybe a small smattering of euros or Japanese yen. Now, the number is disputed, but it's around 50 to 60 percent, much, much lower in the form of dollars, because they don't need them so often.

What the BRICS have started to do, and they're having huge discussions. One of the major topics at the meeting of the BRICS in Kazan, Russia, three weeks ago, was all about replacing the dollar. They are now, for example, conducting huge parts of their trading exchange in other currencies. It used to be, up until three or four years ago.

That if country A [01:04:00] needed to buy oil, for example, from Saudi Arabia or country B, they paid for it with dollars. Everybody had to have dollars in their account because much of the world's trade was conducted in dollars. Neither the exporter nor the importer wanted to worry about exchange rates among many different currencies.

The dollar was safe. The dollar was secure. The dollar was backed by the United States. All of that is gone, and what you're seeing is the BRICS leading the way, and they're discussing whether to develop a more sophisticated regime using computers to allow countries to trade in their own currencies or to come up with a new global currency that will compete with the dollar.

And my guess is they're gonna go with one [01:05:00] of those two, and that those decisions, it'll take a little time. The United States is still a very important, big, rich country. But it, so it'll take, I don't know, five years, maybe more, uh, to get that in place. But already you should be aware that the dollar is less.

and less of an international, um, currency, and less and less secured. And it's not just a dollar. You know, I live in Manhattan. I'm speaking to you from Manhattan, New York City. If I walk along Fifth Avenue or another elegant avenue in New York City at night, most of the apartments are dark because they're not lived in.

They are, owned by foreigners who parked their money inside the United States by buying apartments. Three times a year, their wealthy children come to New York for a shopping [01:06:00] spree, and they live in that apartment. The rest of the time, it's an investment, and it's been a good one. Now, you see lights where you didn't before.

because they're selling their apartments. They don't want to be stuck in the United States. They don't know, for example, with Mr. Trump, whether being a Muslim and owning an apartment is going to become an issue. And maybe you better sell now, before that issue is resolved, rather than wait and see the price of your apartment collapse because no one is going to buy it from you for this or that reason of hostility from the United States government.

All these kinds of questions mean that dealing with the United States. Let me give you a couple of other examples. Part of the war against Russia involved the United States States using its international position to [01:07:00] steal, I mean there's no other word for it, to steal Russia's dollar holdings and gold holdings that Russia had kept in European banks because they need to do business with Europe all the time.

Well, that money in the European banks, the American banks, was seized by the United States government. The Europeans did that in Europe too. Three hundred billion dollars, an enormous amount of money. The Russians, by the way, you know what they've done? They've started seizing US and European assets inside Russia.

And there are a lot of those. But you see, if you were the dominant player, U. S., then all of these developments damage your situation. No matter how fast it goes, it's less for the U. S. economy, less for the U. S. dollar. That's what's going on

BRICS expands to 54.6% of world population by adding Nigeria, Africa's most populous country - Geopolitical Economy Report - Air Date 1-18-25

[01:08:00] The BRICS countries are now 4. 3 billion people. That means they represent 54. 6 percent of the entire world population. The addition of Nigeria into BRICS is also important because Nigeria has one of the fastest growing populations on earth. India, one of the founding members of BRICS, which has the world's largest population, has the fastest growing population from 2024 to 2037.

It's expected that there will be 147 million people born in India. But in second place is Nigeria with 65 million people born in Nigeria in the next decade and a half or so. And if you look at the list of the top 10 countries with the fastest growing populations, Not as a percentage, but as a gross number, half of those countries are now in BRICS.

India, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Egypt. So BRICS cannot be ignored. It represents the majority of the world population, and Nigeria in [01:09:00] particular is pretty symbolic because the largest city in Nigeria, Lagos, is expected to emerge as the world's top megacity by the end of the 21st century. In fact, by 2100, people in the African continent will represent 38 percent of the world population.

Whereas today, people in Africa represent 18 percent of the entire world population. And also today, people in Asia represent 60 percent of the world population. Their percentage of the world population is expected to fall to 45%. In 2100. So in other words, by the end of the 21st century, more than eight out of every 10 people in the world will live in Asia or Africa.

And BRICS as an organization represents these people who are the global majority. They already are today, the global majority, and their majority will continue to increase over time. [01:10:00] Yet, unfortunately, many Western governments and politicians and pundits and academics and intellectuals, they still think the entire world revolves around them.

Around the West, even though the West only represents about 13 or 14 percent of the world population. And it's not just the population. It's also the economy, because many of the BRICS countries have some of the fastest growing economies on earth. Of course, China is the world's number one economy when you measure its GDP at purchasing power parity, and China is the world's industrial superpower.

And if you combine together all of the 19 BRICS members and partners, Together, their GDP represents 42. 2 percent of the entire world economy. This is the updated version, including Nigeria now as a partner. So as BRICS continues to expand, they get closer and closer to representing half of the entire world economy.

[01:11:00] Nigeria is also a major economy in the world. It has the second largest economy on the African continent after Egypt, and Egypt is now a full member of BRICS. In fact, if you look at the five largest economies in Africa, all of them are either part of BRICS or are going to be part of BRICS. So Egypt is a full member, it's the largest economy.

Nigeria is now a partner. It's the second largest economy in Africa. South Africa is of course, a founding member of BRICS. It's the third largest economy in Africa. Algeria was invited to become a partner country of BRICS at the summit in the Russian city of Kazan in 2024, and it did not officially give a response, but it's likely going to accept the invitation.

And Ethiopia was admitted as a full member of BRICS in 2024. So Algeria is the fourth biggest economy in Africa and Ethiopia is the fifth biggest economy. And although yes, it is true that many countries in Africa are suffering from very high [01:12:00] rates of poverty and underdevelopment in no small part due to western colonialism, because they have such large populations, they still have very big economies.

So for instance, Egypt, which is the biggest economy, in Africa has a larger economy than Australia and Nigeria has a larger economy than the Netherlands. And of course, this is all using data that measures GDP at purchasing power parity, which instead of looking simply in nominal terms at exchange rates, which can make Western countries that have very overvalued currencies seem more economically powerful than they actually are.

PPP adjusts for the purchasing power of the currencies locally. And when you do so, you can see that Egypt and Nigeria, these, these BRICS countries are very big economies. Nigeria is also important because it's the larger producer of oil on the African continent. It's the number one producer. And the number two producer Algeria has also been [01:13:00] invited to become a BRICS partner.

And if you look at the top 10 largest oil producing countries on earth, half of them are in BRICS. That includes Russia, China, Iran, the UAE, and Brazil. And Nigeria is the 15th largest producer of oil on earth. So another very important part of Bricks expansion is seeing the overlap between Bricks and And OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, we've seen that now BRICS countries represent more than one third of global oil production, and that number is constantly increasing as BRICS expands.

This means that these countries can have an important role in the global oil market if they collaborate and decide Whether or not to increase production or decrease production. Now, the U. S. is now the world's largest oil producer since the shale boom. And that has complicated things with OPEC, despite the fact that OPEC has been informally expanded, becoming OPEC Plus, and Russia has been [01:14:00] participating.

“Both the US and Israel are delusional” w/ Jeffrey Sachs - Makdisi Street - Air Date 1-15-25

JEFFERY SACHS: The U. S. has been a militarized state pretty much nonstop since 1945 when the Soviet Union, uh, ended in 1991, the assumption of the U.

S. Security elites or state elites is, well, we won. Now, now we are the most powerful country in the world in history. We are, uh, not the new Rome. We have surpassed Rome. No one can stop us. We can take down anyone. And, uh, that was the mindset of crazy people like Richard Cheney, uh, Paul Wolfowitz and many others.

And every president that came in was. Basically instructed by them, but you are the leader of the most powerful machine of, uh, military force and coercion in world history. You are the center of the world, the financial system. You can turn on and off the financial [01:15:00] spigots to any part of the world. You are at the node of the world information system.

You can survey and intercept and disrupt, uh, information flows to any place in the world. You're at the center of the world energy system. You can turn on and off the taps. And if they don't like it, you can blow up the pipelines to do it. So this is the mindset. It is definitely the mindset of the incoming US administration, even if the means might be different.

There's no change in US mindset. It's not exactly a joke that Donald Trump tweets every day that Canada is the 51st state. It's partly taunting. It's partly a game, but I'm sure he has in his mind, why don't we own all that territory? Why is it the United States, the owner of Greenland, in fact, as he says every day, because the [01:16:00] Chinese and the Russians are going to have more control over the Northern sea route.

So we better literally expand the map. To my mind, these people are playing the game I used to play in my childhood, the game of Risk, which was a fun game where the idea was to have your piece on every part of the board. That's how you won. You took over the world, you'd roll the dice and, uh, eventually you'd, uh, wear it down through a war of attrition.

Yeah. Your neighbor, if you had more pieces on the board, but they play this with real lives and they play it with the brutality, cynicism, coercion, subterfuge. And they play it till today. I'm sorry to say it. It's just this is really the way the world is.

SAREE MAKDISI - HOST, MAKDISI STREET: But Jeff, some people are, including you, I think, are, have been talking about a phenomenon called de dollarization which we hear a lot about.

So [01:17:00] could you explain what de dollar, I mean, I think we're familiar with it, but just for our audience, could you explain what de dollarization is? And also, more importantly for this conversation, could you then say, well, what does that mean? Um, For U. S. power, U. S. hegemony, U. S. authority, even U. S.

prosperity itself, insofar as there is still prosperity in the U. S.

JEFFERY SACHS: Great. And as I was running on and on, I forgot to mention the main point, which is that this vision of the U. S. is delusional. That's the bottom line. I forgot to mention that. I did say The U. S. is 4. 1 percent of the world population.

We're about 335 million out of some 8 billion people. It's not enough to run the world. The U. S. is very proud of its military prowess and its technology, but Frankly, there are a lot of countries in the world that can blow up the U. S. and can blow up the world. So, it isn't hegemony, it isn't unipolarity, it isn't being the sole superpower, [01:18:00] but it is a lot of power.

I mean, no other country in the world even remotely comes close to this military archipelago of bases around the world. 80 countries, uh, estimated, they don't make formal lists, so we have to guess around 750 military bases. Britain still has a big network their nostalgia for Empire is impressive, let me say, little pathetic, but impressive.

But the United States really stands, uh, on its own. Now the state of affairs is, uh, that the U S has had several rude awakenings. It couldn't win back in Korea, there was a, an armistice, uh, that ended that conflict. It certainly didn't win in Vietnam. It didn't win in Afghanistan.

It didn't, quote, win anywhere, even though it beat the shit out of these other places. Uh, it couldn't actually [01:19:00] achieve its political goals or often its military goals even. So the idea of unipolarity is a kind of textbook idea of some, uh, second rate thinkers in my mind, but it is a prevailing idea.

Now, what are the bases of this? The core. basis is supposed to be size of the economy. Unfortunately for the U. S., it probably in best comparative terms is now a smaller economy to China. So this is A matter of tremendous frustration to uh, the American leaders and their self-proclaimed unipolarity.

Another feature of this is the role of the dollar which means that when Lebanon, , and, saudi Arabia make a transaction together make a trade. It's likely to be in US dollars, actually, rather than in the local [01:20:00] currency. Even when China trades, in the Middle East or other places up until recently, It has been in dollars.

What does it mean in dollars? It means through U. S. Based banks or banks that deal in U. S. Dollars, which mean that the banks hold dollar assets in the United States, either in counterpart banks or at the Federal Reserve. It also means that transactions pass through a U. S. Controlled electronic system.

The best known part of which is so called SWIFT system, which is an interbank notification system for transactions. This means that the U. S. has had a major ability to turn off financial transactions or to impose sanctions or to threaten countries that if they don't follow the U. S. [01:21:00] line, their banks will be cut off from international commerce.

In other words, countries doing business in other parts of the world that have nothing to do with the U. S. per se. But happened to settle the transactions, uh, through a U. S. based banking system. This is what the role of the dollar has meant. Now, as a monetary economist, I can tell you there's no intrinsic reason why, uh, Thailand and Brazil should settle a trade in dollars.

There are every other way to do that, but you need to create the institutional mechanisms for a non dollar settlement system. It could be in Taibab, it could be in Brazilian Reales, it could be in Chinese Renminbi. But you need institutions and technical mechanisms to make such a settlement and a policy framework to do it.

The dollar has been [01:22:00] convenient for everybody up until recently it became less convenient when the U S government started confiscating your dollars, if you got out of line. And so if you were the government of Venezuela or Iran or North Korea or Afghanistan and most recently Russia, if the U. S.

Treasury didn't like you, well, your money is now our money. And the U. S. froze 300 billion of financial balances that Russia held in dollar assets in a European Institution called Euroclear based in Belgium. The idea of the BRICS countries, which of course started with acronym, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa.

And then expanded to include Ethiopia, Egypt Iran and the United Arab Emirates, and now is [01:23:00] expanding to another nine countries in 2025, is that these are countries that don't want the U. S. to be able to turn on and off the spigot. So they are re engineering their financial transactions. So that their settlements are impervious to U. S. bluster.

SECTION B: CHINA

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering section B, China.

The end of America's global dominance Part 2 - The New Statesman - Air Date 1-8-25

KATE LAMBLE - HOST, NEW STATESMAN: Just before the new year, President Xi Jinping announced that China's economy was going to grow by five percent in twenty twenty five, that things are stable and progressing.

Is that a fair assessment of what the situation is like in China?

GEORGE MAGNUS: Partly. Um, so when Xi Jinping says the economy is going to grow by five percent, you can be sure that it will. I mean, certainly will according to official statistics, whether it does or not, in reality, I think is a moot point. They had the same target for 2020.

Uh, for, uh, it will have been met more or less, but actually probably growth in the economy [01:24:00] was not more than half that. So the growth is under pressure. The economy is doing very well. If you're kind of electric vehicle producer or solar panel producer, manufacturing is not doing too badly, but the wider macro economy is not stable.

The real estate's in a real, real problem and infrastructure spending is under pressure too. So it's, it's not as rosy as Xi Jinping might like to suggest.

KATE LAMBLE - HOST, NEW STATESMAN: I mean, that's interesting because from outside, we think of China as like, you know, the manufacturing hub of the world. Now, I think we've been talking for like, a decade now, about the day that China will take over from the U. S. as the largest economy in the world. Is that a realistic target anymore?

GEORGE MAGNUS: No, I don't think it is. I mean, I think in relative terms, I think peak China is already behind us. In other words, the contribution that China made to this global GDP, for example, I think peaked a couple of years ago.

China's size relative to the United [01:25:00] States dropped in 2023 and 2024, probably isn't going to recover, I don't think, uh, and may continue to drop. And I think that in many ways, the sort of the narrative about China is going to run the 21st century is just that it's a narrative that's propagated by Beijing and by people that believe the West is in terminal decline, which is not to say that the West is in great shape, but neither is China for that matter.

KATE LAMBLE - HOST, NEW STATESMAN: What's going wrong? I mean, if we can say that things are going wrong, just for the fact that it hasn't taken over from the US and hasn't dominated the world.

GEORGE MAGNUS: Well, I think the problem with China, it didn't all start with COVID, although COVID certainly was, um, it exacerbated what were pre existing problems, but basically China's development model is no longer fit for purpose.

So in other words, the model that they used, which is huge concentration on investment and manufacturing, which basically featured in the 1990s and the 2000s, 2010s, that's not really working [01:26:00] anymore. I mean, China is obviously very, very prominent, one third of global manufacturing, the center of global exports, et cetera, et cetera.

But it's very difficult now for China to follow that up with an encore, which is the same, because more and more countries are going to push back against Chinese encroachment on what they see as their own industrial bases and their own employment markets. So China is pursuing a policy that doesn't really have traction in the rest of the world or acceptability.

And it's not really focusing on the domestic. problems that it's got, which is too much debt, not enough jobs, big problems with graduates and migrant workers, and not enough consumption, too much investment. These are political problems which revolve around, you know, giving more people more political power, which is something the Chinese Communist Party is loathe to do.

KATE LAMBLE - HOST, NEW STATESMAN: We're talking in this program as though economics is [01:27:00] intrinsically linked with being a great global power. Is that a reasonable assumption that we're just making that link or could the two things be separate?

GEORGE MAGNUS: I think you're right to make that link. And I think China's ability to leverage power. in Asia and in the rest of the world is very, very closely allied to its economic heft.

So, in 1990, China was probably 3 or 4 percent of global GDP. You know, by 2010, 2015, it was about 18 percent of GDP. No other country has achieved that kind of quantum change. And I think what we see today is China as the world's second biggest economy, very powerful country economically, particularly in manufacturing.

But I think if China's economic heft is now being doubted, especially with regards to say, real estate and infrastructure, employment, if it's now kind of wilting a little [01:28:00] bit, then I think it's political leverage in the world will be affected to some degree. Hard to say how much of this juncture.

KATE LAMBLE - HOST, NEW STATESMAN: You've mentioned that there are some parts of the economy that are going really well.

It's dominance in EVs, in solar and other renewable, these big growing industries that Europe and other areas are going to really need. Is there any chance that China could become the dominant global power?

GEORGE MAGNUS: My view about that is no, based on those criteria. So, you know, we've had a Examples before of countries that excelled at technology and science and engineering, the Soviet Union did in the 50s and 60s, Japan did in the 80s, and yet they were surrounded, you know, these islands of technological excellence were surrounded by a sea of deep imbalances and macroeconomic troubles.

China is a more sophisticated version of both, but nevertheless suffers from the same problem. It has a small modern sector Transcribed which is probably less than 10 [01:29:00] percent of the economy, which is super efficient, global brands, EVs, climate change mitigation and all this. But actually it's not a big employer.

It won't give a ticket to graduates and migrant workers to prosper and get on. And so I think the bigger economy, which is Almost all of it, except for the modern sector, doesn't have the right sort of institutional characteristics to allow for the diffusion of efficiency and technology in the way that I think we have come to expect.

I'm not saying that the West has got the answer to this question either, but we're all in this desperate search for technological diffusion and higher productivity. And China certainly doesn't seem to show the right sort of exhibit the right kind of features that enable it to do that.

Why China's population is shrinking - Vox - Air Date 3-27-23

CHRISTINA THORNELL - HOST, VOX: In the 50s, under Mao, China experienced one of the most gruesome famines on record. 30 million people died. If we look at that on the birth and death rates chart, you'll see a big spike in deaths.

[01:30:00] At the same time, the birth rate dropped, causing the population to shrink. But as often happens with wars, famines, and other wars, other major crises immediately after there was a baby boom. Combined with global medical advances that decreased infant mortality rates, China's average family now had six children.

The birth rate had skyrocketed, which the government saw as a big problem.

WENG FANG: The Chinese leadership realized the population was growing too fast and something needs to be done. The government came up with a policy. They

CHRISTINA THORNELL - HOST, VOX: called it later, longer, fewer, later marriages, longer birth intervals, and fewer births.

As a result, China's birth rate started trending down. But it wasn't low enough for China's leaders. And in 1980, they implemented the extreme one child policy. policy, which limited most families to one child.

WENG FANG: That policy was also backed up by very harsh measures. There were campaigns of sterilization, IUD insertion and [01:31:00] induced abortions.

CHRISTINA THORNELL - HOST, VOX: And while these campaigns began during the later longer fewer era, they were at their worst under the one child policy, when China sterilized 20 million men and women and induced nearly 15 million abortions in a single year. But China had accomplished its goal. Population growth was under control.

Except, as China would soon realize, these restrictive policies worked a little too well. In order for any population to stay the same size in the long run, each couple needs to have, on average, 2. 1 children. This is called the replacement age. The idea is that one child replaces one parent, and that 0. 1 makes up for children who die before they become adults.

But China has had a fertility rate that's far below two for over three decades. To bring that up, in 2016, China finally ended the one child policy. And after briefly trying out a three child policy, in 2021, they finally let families have as [01:32:00] many children as they'd like. But it hasn't worked. One big reason is the unique family structure of China.

WENG FANG: We were looking at what's called a 4 2 1 family structure with a couple having four parents above them and a one child pillow.

CHRISTINA THORNELL - HOST, VOX: Most countries have diverse family structures, some with three kids, others with none. But with China's 4 2 1 model, millions of only children are under increasing pressure to care for their aging parents and elderly grandparents.

And this can make having multiple children even harder, especially as the cost of living keeps going up. A recent survey revealed that more than 50 percent of young people don't want more than one child because of financial and work pressures.

WENG FANG: We have seen cash subsidies for additional birth, longer maternal leaves, subsidizes for kindergarten, and all sorts of monetary support.

Well, the thing is, almost none of [01:33:00] them. Has worked because having a child is exceedingly expensive and it is a life lifelong commitment. And so it's not, it's really actually hard to put a price on this,

CHRISTINA THORNELL - HOST, VOX: but China's population crisis isn't just about babies. It's also about the balance between young and old.

If we look at population pyramids that show distribution by age, we see that countries like Kenya with rapid population growth look like this. Wide at the bottom, representing a lot of new, young people, and narrow at the top. Countries experiencing slower growth, like the Philippines, are still triangular, but the difference between top and bottom is less pronounced.

Now take a look at China, and notice the narrow bottom, so fewer babies, and the heavy top, a larger number of elderly people.

WENG FANG: Which is a happy outcome of our improvement in health and the standard of living, um, but combined with[01:34:00]

CHRISTINA THORNELL - HOST, VOX: In 2050, that pyramid is projected to look like this. And that will further drive down China's population, shrink its labor force, and put the whole country in a uniquely difficult position.

In the 80s, China became a hotspot for foreign investment, cheap manufacturing and exports. A generation later, it was shooting up the ranks and becoming one of the world's leading and fastest growing economies by GDP. But not only did that economic modernization drive birth rates down further, it also didn't translate to an equally strong economy for everyone.

If we look at the GDP per capita, the best indicator we have for standard of living, China is much lower than these high income countries. China became a major world economy nearly overnight. But it's still a middle income country. Many, especially in rural areas, haven't benefited much from China's economic boom.

And [01:35:00] China has yet to develop the necessary safety nets to support its aging population.

WENG FANG: To build the social infrastructure, like the social programs and health care. And in pension, uh, it takes time. And that's getting, uh, actually tougher with the economy that's slowing down.

CHRISTINA THORNELL - HOST, VOX: And a slower economy will inevitably redefine China's role in the world as a manufacturing superpower.

WENG FANG: What this means for China, for the world, is that the resource constraints from within would also constrain the Chinese ambition, uh, its global reach.

CHRISTINA THORNELL - HOST, VOX: In some ways, China isn't alone. A lot of Asian and European countries are experiencing population declines, too. What makes China different is how fast this all has happened.

It was only 40 years ago that China started leveraging its booming population to become an economic superpower. All while still trying to stem [01:36:00] population growth. Now that China's population growth is officially over, China may have to rethink its future, not just as a global superpower, but for its citizens at home, too.

Trump, China, and the New Cold War - Macrodose - Air Date 12-10-24

JAMES MEADWAY - HOST, MACRODOSE: Over the past couple of weeks, tensions in the simmering trade war between the world's two major powers have escalated still further. President Joe Biden's outgoing administration has added around 140 Chinese companies to its expanding list of banned entities.

In response, China has hit back with its own measures, including bans on the export of key minerals essential for modern semiconductors, with gallium being the most critical. Economist Prashant Garg and his team at Imperial College London have done some fascinating research highlighting just how vital gallium is to the entire semiconductor supply chain.

We'll link to that in the show notes, but the key takeaway is something we've covered before. Semiconductor manufacturing is arguably one of the most [01:37:00] complex machines humanity has ever built, and these chips power virtually every digital device we own. Any threat to that system comes with serious economic consequences.

It's almost miraculous, though now we take it completely for granted, that some of the most advanced pieces of equipment ever created, tiny silicon fragments with billions of transistors etched into place, are produced in such massive quantities that even the most cutting edge chips are affordable enough to end up in devices we casually lose on the bus or drop into a puddle.

But that complexity, stretching from obscure, often quite rare raw materials necessary for different stages of manufacturing, to the wildly sophisticated machines needed to etch purified silicon, to the distribution across a globe of billions of these devices, means that the supply chain also contains huge vulnerabilities.

A couple of months ago in the show, we talked about how Storm Helene [01:38:00] hit the US and temporarily shut down one of the very few mines producing high grade quartz, the kind needed to make the super pure silicon used in semiconductors. For a while, it seemed like the world's chip supply might face serious disruption a few months down the line, but in the end, the mine has reopened and is now operating at nearly full capacity.

The Imperial Report uses AI techniques to analyse thousands of standardised product records, mapping the connections between raw materials and the goods they're used in. Gallium, for example, is often substituted for silicon in some cheaper semiconductors, and serves as the light emitting component in LEDs.

This gives it a vast range of everyday applications. And here's the kicker, China produces 98 percent of the world's supply. Last year, even limited export controls by China caused the global price of gallium to double, and it's not [01:39:00] easy for manufacturers to simply swap one critical mineral for another.

So this new export ban will have a significant impact, rippling across the economy. Donald Trump has, of course, threatened a far broader trade war against China, claiming 100 percent tariffs on Chinese products. But, as we've suggested before, this looks more like the opening round in a negotiating position than a firm commitment.

His senior advisors, along with others closely connected to big business, have made it clear that Trump sees today's big threats as just the opening move in a negotiation that will really begin when he re enters office in January. China, for its part, has treated the Trump announcements with some public concern, understandably, stressing the likely cost to US consumers.

But the country's ambassador to Washington has, for example, been keen to underline that they know full well [01:40:00] Trump is intending to negotiate on final tariff positions. The broader strategy here is one that Trump's pick for treasury secretary, Scott Besant, outlined in a speech over the summer. If the international economic order is being reshaped, he argues, and it is, the US should use all the levers at its disposal to bend this reshaping to its own advantage.

One obvious move is leveraging the sheer size of the US economy, with its 350 million consumers and their dollar purchasing power. Trump has, for example, boasted for months about how he would raise tariffs on imports from China by 60 percent or more. Just last month, he said on social media that he would impose a 10 percent tariff above any additional tariffs on all products from China.

He's also talked about using the threat of tariffs to push China and Mexico to do more to help curb the U. S. opioid crisis, [01:41:00] since the two countries are the top sources of fentanyl and its precursor chemicals. Now, China insists it has no role in the U. S. drug crisis, but this is where we see how the threat of tariffs is being used to achieve a broader policy goal.

Much of this policymaking is likely to be fundamentally reactive, all under the broad banner of America First. It's about responding to a world that's seen as increasingly hostile to the interests, as the new administration sees them, of US capitalism. The two key interests here are military strength and, tied to that, technological leadership in critical high tech sectors.

China has moved with impressive speed over the last few decades, threatening to erode the US's edge in these areas. So from the first Trump administration, extended under President Biden, and now likely to deepen in a second Trump term, we're seeing increasingly aggressive trade [01:42:00] moves aimed at preventing China from gaining that technological advantage.

This may not work as intended. The evidence so far suggests that China has responded by putting more resources into its own domestic industries. As a result, Huawei, the high technology supplier heavily targeted by tariffs, can now build phones with homegrown semiconductors that are not far off the cutting edge of what TSMC in Taiwan is able to produce.

In other words, the restrictions and tariffs have created a kind of hothouse for Chinese innovation, exactly the opposite of what was intended by successive U. S. administrations. By pushing hard on what it sees as its own interests, the U. S. is actually undermining them. But this will likely only strengthen the case in Washington for even more tariff restrictions.

Obviously, none of this is particularly rational. In theory, there is a better way through [01:43:00] this. If America is concerned about China's trade practices undermining its own manufacturing, it could, for instance, use a threat of tariffs to secure a more favourable position in negotiations with China, like agreeing to a controlled devaluation of the dollar, which would make US exports more competitive worldwide.

This is something Vice President in Waiting J. D. Vance has argued for. Now, back in 1985, a similar deal was struck with Japan, the so called Plaza Accords, where, under the threat of increased tariffs on Japanese exports, Japan agreed to revalue the yen upwards. This made its own exports less competitive, but eased pressure on U.

S. manufacturers in particular. Cyan Vallet, from the German Council on Foreign Relations, writing in the Financial Times this week, argues that the U. S. under Trump could be about to achieve the [01:44:00] same deal in parallel circumstances with China. Vallet believes that the macroeconomic entanglements of China and the U. S. will force a kind of economic rationality to reassert itself. Both sides will recognize a mutual interest in backing down from dispute. If, as in 1985, the U. S. is prepared to use its capacity to threaten wisely and to set up, quote, a grand bargain with China, so the dollar is allowed to fall in value, China allows the yen to rise, and tariff restrictions are dialed back.

I think this is far too optimistic. One wrinkle is Vallee's call for spending cuts in the U. S., necessary in his global rebalancing to prevent the U. S. demanding to borrow more and more from the rest of the world. The first Trump administration was very careful not to touch most Americans welfare benefits, and Trump himself was associated with [01:45:00] significant, COVID.

Whatever the chatter about cutting the administrative state we hear now, Getting politically unpopular spending cuts past this President and this Congress will be incredibly difficult. The main difference between the 1985 deal and today is that whilst Japan was politically and militarily subordinated to the U. S., China most certainly is not. So while Japan eventually buckled and accepted a deal that, in hindsight, wasn't particularly beneficial to its own economy, China has no reason to do the same thing.

SECTION C: RUSSIA

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Up next, section C, Russia.

Vladimir Putin: What does the future hold for Russia's leader? - BBC News - Air Date 5-11-24

FIONA HILL: He's been in power for a quarter of a century. Um, I think all of us are well familiar with that axiom that absolute power corrupts, absolutely, and especially over time.

And the longer that Putin has been in office, obviously, uh, the longer he's moved away from, uh, those very first, uh, precepts. [01:46:00] In terms of democracy, uh, Putin has defined it in different ways over time. He started to talk about managed democracy, a kind of democracy, uh, initiated from the top down at various points in terms of creating political parties.

He moved himself out of, uh, the position of being underpinned by a political party or even a political movement. He presided over changes in the constitution that enshrined the president as the supreme leader, uh, with a vertical of power and him very much at the apex of it. He had his, uh, surrogate, Dmitry Medvedev, who was briefly, uh, president of Russia.

And I think most of us have forgotten this by this point. Extend the presidential terms out to Russia. By another couple of years. So now he looks like he'll be with us not just till 2030, but even further beyond till 2036.

STEVE ROSENBERG - HOST, BBC NEWS: How much of this transformation do you think was inevitable? And how much is it the fault of the West?

Did the [01:47:00] West make mistakes which pushed Putin in that direction?

FIONA HILL: I think an awful lot of it is the weight of the system itself and the way that it's evolved over time. And I think the external environment, you mentioned mistakes that have been made, has become increasingly permissive for Putin to make these kinds of changes because there's been an evolution of change elsewhere.

We've had the rise of strongmen leaders, not just in places like China or Turkey, for example, but inside of Europe as well. Uh, we had the presidency of Donald Trump, and perhaps even the return of Donald Trump to the president, who's styling himself in the same mode as Putin, as a strongman leader. I think the cardinal mistake has been taking our eyes off the ball about how, uh, Russia was evolving.

in that larger context, that Russia no longer wanted to be part of Europe in the kind of sense of joining in in European institutions. But a lot of the internal, uh, developments, those are developments that nobody from the outside could possibly, uh, [01:48:00] affect in any major way. And Putin has used lots of events, uh, for example, the war in Chechnya when he first, uh, came into office, uh, terrorist attacks, uh, and all kinds of other developments, uh, to basically strip away many of the checks and balances in the Russian system.

STEVE ROSENBERG - HOST, BBC NEWS: And now, in what direction is he taking Russia?

FIONA HILL: Well, in many respects, he's taking Russia in what, um, as historians would see as a very traditional, um, and typical way. Having been in power for so long, he seems to be styling himself, uh, as a modern day Tsar. He's talking about the regathering of Russian lands, of course, the, uh, annexation of Crimea.

followed by the full on invasion of Ukraine fits right into that. Everything now, in terms of the symbolism, uh, the way that he refers to himself. This Russia now forged in war for the future is taking us back to these past patterns in Russian and Soviet history. Putin thinks of himself now as Vladimir the Great, um, as a Russian [01:49:00] Tsar.

Um, he's been in power for a quarter of a century. He aims for much longer than that, maybe a third of this particular century and then beyond. And that's how he sees himself. He's even, I think, gauging himself in the terms of this longevity as well as in the deeds and the acts that he undertakes.

STEVE ROSENBERG - HOST, BBC NEWS: To what extent do you think Vladimir Putin is going to be defined, though, by the war in Ukraine and how that ends?

FIONA HILL: I think this is now going to be the definitional issue. I mean, again, if we took ourselves back to a different period, the first two presidential terms of Putin, for example, that took us up to the financial crisis, you know, back in 2008, 2009, before he stepped away to be prime minister, I think we'd have had a fairly favourable assessment of Putin because he really did many of the things that he set out to do, which was stabilise the country politically, He made the country solvent again.

And now the war in Ukraine, I would say going back to the annexation of Crimea, back 10 years ago, has really dramatically [01:50:00] changed that trajectory.

STEVE ROSENBERG - HOST, BBC NEWS: And is the Putin we see now, the Putin that, you know, we're going to get until the end? Uh, is there any way back for him?

FIONA HILL: It very much seems like he has crossed the Rubicon.

I mean, I wouldn't rule out completely, uh, the opportunities for change. It would have to come in a very special set of circumstances in which I think he would be able to claim some kind of victory, uh, and then try to retrench. Putin himself knows that loosening up has, of course, Gorbachev did and Yeltsin did could be very dangerous and is likely to be very dangerous for his own position.

And we have the, uh, Prigozhin, uh, insurgency, uh, you know, back a year or so ago as well, which for him is most likely a signal of what can go wrong when you're too permissive in your environment, we need to be prepared, you know, for dealing with more of the same and trying to shift those calculations over time by showing our own.

resilience and resolve to push back.

STEVE ROSENBERG - HOST, BBC NEWS: We never talked about [01:51:00] Brezhnevism, we never spoke about Gorbachevism or Yeltsinism, but people talk about Putinism. If you have an ism after your name, that kind of makes you special, doesn't it? Does that mean that Vladimir Putin has made a particular impression on his country and the world?

FIONA HILL: Yeltsin himself spent a lot of time trying to come up with a new ism. He even had task forces that you, Steve, probably remember given your own longevity, uh, in Russia. I certainly do from the 1990s. There was a search for a new Russian idea and Putin has actually presented himself as the result of that search for a new Russian idea saying, I'm it.

You know, it's, which is a very personalized, uh, charismatic, uh, presidency and the president being, uh, the, the, the pinnacle of, uh, the Russian, uh, power system. Now the question, uh, becomes if we have Putin styling himself as a Vladimir the Great, uh, as a, uh, the new embodiment of Russian czars or Joseph Stalin, because we had Stalinism, of course, under [01:52:00] Leninism before that, but Putin doesn't like Vladimir Lenin at all.

He doesn't like that kind of revolutionary bringing down the state, uh, approach. But the question becomes, just like after the death of Stalin, Whether the system, uh, can be maintained and will be sustained without Putin at the center of that. And I think that is a, actually a genuine question because there is nobody else with any kind of traction within the system, let alone name recognition internally and externally, Putin has become it.

And, you know, as they say, there can be no other at this particular point.

Russia's gas games - The Europeans | European news, politics and culture - Air Date 1-15-25

DOMINIC KRAEMER - HOST, THE EUROPEANS: The biggest eye opener thus far in 2025 is the fact that despite Russia and Ukraine having been in a full blown war since 2022, Ukraine has continued to transport Russian gas across its territory so that Russia could keep selling its gas to Europe.

KATY LEE - HOST, THE EUROPEANS: Yeah, I have to confess, this is something that I was only quite dimly aware of until very recently, but, but it [01:53:00] seems kind of crazy.

DOMINIC KRAEMER - HOST, THE EUROPEANS: I mean, because the pipeline that goes across Poland was basically shut down. I thought that that was also the case for the Ukrainian pipeline, but it wasn't. So this pipeline was in operation for more than 50 years.

And throughout this time, it helped pump billions of cubic meters of so called cheap Russian gas into Europe. helping economies of countries such as Germany, Italy, Austria, or France grow exponentially.

KATY LEE - HOST, THE EUROPEANS: Very convenient for everyone. Um, but how come this carried on even after Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022?

DOMINIC KRAEMER - HOST, THE EUROPEANS: Basically, it turns out that it was a contract that dated from before 2022, and simply everyone made money out of it. So we just carried on with the situation, even though it's completely weird. Also, So, some European recipients of this gas put a lot of pressure on Ukraine to continue the deal to prolong their time to look for other gas sources.

KATY LEE - HOST, THE EUROPEANS: Okay. Makes sense, I guess. [01:54:00]

DOMINIC KRAEMER - HOST, THE EUROPEANS: Yeah. However, the deal expired on January 1st and Ukraine cut off the pipeline saying it couldn't carry on taking this blood money for transporting Russian gas while Moscow is continuing to kill its people.

KATY LEE - HOST, THE EUROPEANS: That also makes sense.

DOMINIC KRAEMER - HOST, THE EUROPEANS: Some European leaders, though, I think you'll easily guess which ones decided to make a huge fuss about it.

But is it really such a big deal? And what does it mean for Europe's energy security? Who's affected? How well is Germany doing? Europe doing in actually freeing itself from its dependency on Russian energy? We had the privilege of asking all these questions to Dr. Szymon Kardaś.

KATY LEE - HOST, THE EUROPEANS: Szymon, thank you so much for joining us.

SZYMON KARDÁS: Thank you. Thank you for the invitation. It's a pleasure.

DOMINIC KRAEMER - HOST, THE EUROPEANS: Let's start from the hysterical reactions to this pipeline closing from some of Europe's leaders. Namely, people like Slovakia's president, Robert Fico, Hungary's leader, Viktor Orban, or Austrian right wing politicians, who are most probably coming into power soon.

Were they really that unprepared for this? [01:55:00]

SZYMON KARDÁS: First of all, the termination of the transit deal was expected. I mean, the position of Kiev was quite clear in 2024 that they are not interested in extending the deal with Russia. So, EU member states, especially those that were still importing Russia's natural gas through Ukraine, had a pretty large amount of time, I mean, to prepare for this moment.

And actually they were doing preparations. I mean, Slovakia concluded deals related to natural gas import with Polish company Orlen, with many Western energy companies like BP, the same when it comes to Austria. In December, 2023, the level of dependence on Russia's natural gas in Austria was actually extremely high, 98%.

I mean, this was the level of dependence and they were also preparing for it. They were fueling the gas storages. They even terminated the contract with Gazprom when it comes to natural gas import. And when [01:56:00] the 1st of January 2025 came, actually, we did not observe any problems in terms of the security of supply of natural gas to countries like Slovakia and Austria, they managed quite smoothly to turn into alternative sources and there were no disruptions and no crisis on the EU side.

And Hungary, I mean, this is the most funny actually case, because Hungary is not getting Russia's natural gas through Ukraine anymore. According to deals that they are signed in 2021, they import Russia's natural gas mainly through the TurkStream pipeline. I mean, TurkStream, this is a pipeline that Russia constructed through the Black Sea.

So in case of Hungary, those harsh statements were actually quite strange and funny to some extent because they are not dependent on the Ukrainian route

KATY LEE - HOST, THE EUROPEANS: So even though Robert Fico had warned of absolute chaos if this [01:57:00] deal didn't continue. We largely haven't seen any of that chaos because Europe was actually fairly well prepared for this.

Everybody knew it was coming. What about the impact on the Russian economy though? Is this a big deal for Russia? How much of their exports and how much cash have they lost as a result of this pipeline closing?

SZYMON KARDÁS: Well, according to industry sources, The natural gas that was shipped through Ukraine was estimated at 6.

5 billion US dollars annually. But on the other hand, it's important to point out that revenues that were coming from natural gas export were not the most important ones. Around 80 percent of revenues that were coming from oil and gas in total were related to revenues from the oil sector and around 20 percent from gas.

But of course, I would not underestimate those billion of dollars that Russia [01:58:00] is spending. is losing since 2022 because it was an important source of revenues for the Russian ruling elite. The elite was gaining tremendous benefits from selling natural gas to the European Union, which was actually the crucial market for Gazprom.

And since they almost lost it, I believe that the elite itself is actually experiencing this loss in a more significant way than the Russian budget.

DOMINIC KRAEMER - HOST, THE EUROPEANS: Somehow I'm not so worried about Russian oligarchs. I think they'll be fine. However, this means that the only place really affected is Transnistria. This parastate breakaway region of Moldova Squeeze between Moldova and Ukraine their economy as well as the entire energy sector was almost entirely dependent on Russian gas Imports which they were getting for free by the way We've seen reports on this [01:59:00] region being hit by a massive crisis The industry came to a halt, there's very little gas to keep Transnistrian houses warm, or even cook meals.

Plus, this means that Moldova had to look for electricity elsewhere, as previously 80 percent of it was coming from a gas power plant in Transnistria. What's going on down there?

SZYMON KARDÁS: Uh, Transnistria was affected in the most significant way. And actually, this is a problem for Russia. Because it's now Russia that needs to decide whether they want to keep this crisis situation evolving in Transnistria or provide some support for this region.

And actually they have alternative routes that they can use if they want to supply Transnistria with natural gas after the termination of the deal with Ukraine.

KATY LEE - HOST, THE EUROPEANS: And is there any sign on how Russia is thinking about this, which direction they might go on. I mean, in the meantime, people in this region are freezing.

It's a [02:00:00] terrible situation.

SZYMON KARDÁS: Well, basically Russia has two options. One option is to keep things as they are right now, to put more pressure on the government in Moldova or maybe the EU. to put pressure on Ukraine and maybe at the end of the day, force Ukraine to conclude some kind of a new transit deal through the Ukrainian territory, or simply play on the evolving crisis situation that would lead to some political problems in Moldova itself.

And since we, uh, we are ahead of parliamentary elections in Moldova. If this economic situation in Moldova is getting worse, that might play in favor of Russia, which is interested, clearly interested, in actually having some internal turbulence in Moldova ahead of the elections, expecting that maybe some pro Russian forces will come back to power and it will change the situation in Moldova, which Russia is clearly interested in.

And the second option is that, well, [02:01:00] Russia agrees to supply the natural gas to Transnistria using the alternative route, and this alternative route is Turk Stream. The gas is there, the electricity is produced, but maybe not at the volumes that would allow Moldova to restore the mechanism that was enforced previously, which might create, again, some tensions inside because Moldova would still be forced to buy electricity from the EU, which is more expensive and stuff like that.

This is a big question, which scenario Russia might be interested in implementing, but we can always bet that they will use the worst scenario for us. And well, the challenge for us is to respond in a way that would neutralize their calculations.

Why Putin might not be so worried about Russia's economy - The Bunker - Air Date 1-9-25

CHRIS JONES - HOST, THE BUNKER: I think last time we spoke actually, the Russian economy had grown and was expecting to grow last year as well.

And I think one of the things you said to me was that Russia's problem is not a lack of growth, it's a lack of people to fill the roles that are created by that growth. [02:02:00] Is that still the case, especially when you consider, you know, this war in Ukraine has been prolonged and there are Even more casualties day by day.

Is it still the case that growth isn't necessarily the problem, it's a lack of people, it's a lack of workforce to fill the roles?

DR. RICHARD CONNOLLY: That's right. So far, Russia's problem is excess demand relative to supply. The government's spending a lot of money on the war, it's spending a lot of money on supporting the economy.

Businesses, whether they're states owned or privately owned or investing, at a much higher rate than before the war. So, you know, on that side, in terms of consumers are spending. Um, a lot more money than they did before the war. So seeing people go out and generate a lot of economic demand, the problem, as you say, is on the supply side is keeping up with that demand.

If you don't have enough labor resources to, to, uh, to respond, um, to all of this demand, then it can result not in growth, but in inflation. We're certainly seeing some, some evidence of that last year, but to [02:03:00] answer your question about growth, and I think if we go back to when we last spoke, the Russian economy has surprised many in 2023 by growing at 3.

6 percent annually. And where at the beginning of the year, a lot of people suggested that it would just bump along the bottom. It'd be lucky if it grew over 1%. If we were to go back a year ago, the IMF thought that Russian economy would grow. In 2024 by around about 1 to 1. 5%. In the end, and the final, uh, figures are yet to come in, it looks like it's going to have grown by closer to 4 percent because of this, you know, this demand that I've spoken about a moment ago.

So certainly over the last two years, The economy has outperformed nearly all growth expectations. Now, whether or not it can keep that up is a different question. I think it's likely that the economy will slow this year. I said the same a year ago and I was wrong. Accelerated slightly. But because of those supply side constraints that you mentioned, I do really this time, [02:04:00] I think it's unlikely it's going to grow anything like 4%.

But. Most outside organizations, the World Bank, the IMF, they foresee growth of anywhere between one and a half and two and a half percent this year. And I think if that was to happen, the Russian government will be pretty content.

CHRIS JONES - HOST, THE BUNKER: What is it then that is causing the Russian economy to outperform people's expectations?

DR. RICHARD CONNOLLY: Well, the first thing to look at is the elevated government spending that I've mentioned. There's a lot of money spent on defense, which perhaps we'll talk about shortly. And that's boosted the incomes of a lot of people, not just in the defense sector, but when those people are being paid more in the military and they go and spend money, that drives prices up elsewhere.

So real incomes last year grew significantly as they did in 2023. If we look at nominal incomes, that's. putting inflation to one side, uh, incomes rose by over 20 percent last year. That's on average for some sectors, it grew by 40 or 50%. Um, and that's of course put a lot more money in people's pockets and [02:05:00] they've gone out and spent more.

So government spending is one. The second really important point as well. And I think this is key to Russia's resilience since the war began is that they continue to sell oil abroad. And it really is an oil story because gas sales have gone down significantly because Europe's, uh, nearly ceased buying Russian gas.

Not quite, but it has cut it down quite significantly, but Russia has continued to find buyers for its oil and for other minerals and metals. And as a result, it's been able to record. Very healthy trade surpluses every year. And in very simple terms, that means that there's more money in the economy than, than is going as, and they also run a current account surplus.

Again, what that means in simple terms is that they're investing less than they're saving. That means there's a pool of surplus money washing around the Russian economy. And for as long as that remains the case, then it seems to me that it's likely that the economy will continue to grow.

CHRIS JONES - HOST, THE BUNKER: And then just before we get onto [02:06:00] the, the defense budget and, and the hope for Russia in, in 2025, I just wanna ask how much infighting is there within, within Russia over how the economy is being run at the moment?

For example, I saw that Andrea Coston, who's the CEO of, uh, VTB Bank blamed the raising of interest rates on the fact that the central bank is, is run by a woman. How many issues like that are there at the moment? in Russia in terms of pinning reasons onto why the economy perhaps isn't doing as well as some people would hope that it would be doing.

DR. RICHARD CONNOLLY: Well, I think some of the infighting that you're talking about is more a battle over the price of borrowing, as you've mentioned, their high interest rates, Russia's key rate was put up to 21 percent in October, which is a post Soviet high. And that has meant that for those who are reliant on credit in the Russian economy.

Then actually going to be paying a lot in [02:07:00] servicing their desk, because, of course, if you borrow from a bank, then usually you'll pay more than the key rate. You might be paying closer to 30 or 40%. So some of the infighting that we're seeing is between if we're going to simplify between some industrialists on the one hand.

Who might be borrowing and then the central bank on the other, who is formulating a monetary policy. That's a real simplification because, um, it's not all the reality is a lot more complicated than that, but certainly there is some. evidence of some infighting. I wouldn't say it's anything more than what we'd normally see in Russia.

They have these types of debates and disagreements before the war, and I've certainly not seen anything to suggest that this is in any way getting out of hand. Um, and one of the reasons for that, and I think it's worth making this point is because a lot of people look at the key rate 21 percent and say, well, that must mean the economy's, you know, in danger of imminent collapse.

But there's a couple of factors that need to be taken into account. Number one is the rate of inflation is probably higher. than the official [02:08:00] data, which suggests it's around about nine or 10%. So if inflation is actually closer to 20 percent and we've got a real interest rate, that is the key rate minus the rate of inflation, it might be two or 3%, it might be 5%, but that's not as destructive as we might think of having it when you've got a 21 percent key rate.

in a 10 percent inflation rate. Um, so that's the first point. The second point is that a lot of Russian firms and parts of Russian society are able to access subsidized loans. And these loans are much cheaper and available at a much lower rate than the 21 percent key rate that most people focus on. Um, and so because of that, people aren't as effective.

And by these elevated interest rates, and that's partially explains why companies keep spending and consumers keep spending.

CHRIS JONES - HOST, THE BUNKER: Let's do some more numbers than the defense budget for 2025. Because this is this is pretty big. Russia has increased its national defense budget [02:09:00] to I think just over 100 billion pounds for 2025, which is around about 32 percent of our GDP.

the governmental spending. What can we realistically learn from those figures? What, what does that show that Putin's planning for 2025?

DR. RICHARD CONNOLLY: Well, I think the key points to make here are defense spending for obvious reasons soared from 2022 onwards. It's grown every year. Um, and each year it's hit a post Soviet high.

And for 2025, it's going to hit another post Soviet high. And it looks as though total defense spending is going to be about 25 percent higher than it was in 2024. Total defense spending accounts for about 40 percent of the federal budget, which sounds very high. We have to bear in mind is Russia is a federation.

And so a lot of, um, public spending and tax takes place at the local level. So if we take the consolidated Budget total military expenditure [02:10:00] will probably account for around about 20 percent of government total consolidated government spending. So that's why as I watering as a lot of the headline figures would suggest it is still high, though it's still higher than most countries in the world because Russia is fighting this very intense, large scale war in Ukraine terms of what it tells us.

It tells us that they're prepared to continue fighting that war. That they continued to not only fight the war, but also reconstitute, that is, rebuild its military. Russia's military now is larger than it was before the war began. It's got more of some things than it had before the war began. So things like drones, long range cruise missiles, uh, things like this didn't exist in the same, uh, Uh, number as they do today.

Some things exist in a lower number, armored vehicles and tanks, which have been destroyed on the battlefield in large numbers, um, but Russian factories are racing to produce as many of those as they can, they're struggling to keep up because so many have been lost. Um, but nevertheless, there's [02:11:00] The Russian defense industry at the moment, he's working around the clock as it has for two and a half years now.

And I think what the budget is saying is it's signaling that they're prepared to commit to this for the long run. I don't think that the Kremlin is expecting that Trump is going to come in and come up with a, um, a peace proposal that suits the Kremlin. And so therefore they're prepared to continue to stay in this fight for as long as they need to.

SECTION D: FRANCE

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: This is section D, France.

Frances Government Collapses: What Next? - TLDR News EU - Air Date 12-5-24

GEORGINA FINDLAY - HOST, TLDR NEWS EU: After the European Parliament elections in June, which were won decisively by Marine Le Pen's national rally, Macron called a snap legislative election and challenged the French to quote, make the right choice for themselves and future generations.

His thinking was that by going to parliamentary elections early, France would be forced into deciding they didn't want the far right running the country, and instead would rally around his own centrist ensemble alliance. But things didn't go quite as planned. Ensemble fared poorly in the first round, and while tactical coalitions between Ensemble and the left wing [02:12:00] New Popular Front, or NFP alliance, did mean that the National Rally won less seats in the second round than they were expected to, no party won an outright majority, and the NFP actually won the most seats.

This seemed to support the idea that voters truly had had enough of Macron, and France's parliament, the National Assembly, ended up split awkwardly into three blocks, left, center, and right, with no clear option for a governing majority. Subsequently, there was further disagreement over the appointment of France's prime minister.

The NFP argued that, because it had won the legislative election, it had the right to form a government and to propose a left wing prime minister. However, Macron didn't like that, and said, ironically enough, that the NFP's lack of parliamentary majority meant they'd be immediately toppled by a no confidence vote.

So he then decided to appoint Michel Barnier as Prime Minister. Outside of France, Barnier is perhaps best known as the EU's former chief Brexit negotiator, but he comes from the centre right Les Républicains party in France. And he actually put himself forward [02:13:00] as their presidential candidate for the 2022 election, running on a surprisingly hardline anti immigration law and order platform.

Barnier ultimately lost to Valéry Pécresse, who went on to become Les Républicains candidate, but his tack to the right earned him some credibility with Le Pen Co, which is one of the reasons they tacitly accepted his nomination as prime minister. But even though the left still weren't happy with Barnier's appointment, with the support of the National Rally and Ensemble, Barnier effectively had the go ahead to begin his program to fix France's debt crisis.

For context, France's deficit equates to more than 6 percent of its GDP, exceeding the 3 percent maximum set out by the EU. Barnier accordingly pledged to get this down to 5 percent of GDP in 2025 and 3 percent by 2029. And to reach it, in October, he proposed a 2025 budget consisting of 20 billion euros in tax increases and 40 billion euros in spending cuts.

But neither the NFP nor the National Rally supported this, as both had fought the election on platforms that would have increased [02:14:00] France's debt even further. Barnier did make some last minute concessions to the National Rally though, including on electricity taxes and healthcare spending, but this still wasn't enough.

And on Monday, Barnier resorted to Article 49. 3 of France's constitution. Allowing him to force the budget through without a vote. Predictably, both the NFP and the National Rally immediately tabled votes of no confidence, which happened on Wednesday. So what happened on Wednesday? Well, after 48 grueling hours from Monday to Wednesday, during which the no confidence motions were examined, the vote went ahead on Wednesday evening, and passed with 331 votes in the 577 seat National Assembly, forcing Barnier to resign.

Accordingly, Barnier's minority government was toppled by a combination of the left and far right. This makes 73 year old Barnier the shortest serving French Prime Minister since 1958, and plunges France right back into political chaos. After his defeat in the no confidence vote, Barnier said it had been an honour to have served France and the French [02:15:00] people with dignity, but that the vote would make everything more serious and more difficult.

However, we should point out that the no confidence vote is better viewed as an expression of frustration at Macron's leadership, rather than with Barnier himself. An EFOP survey conducted in mid November showed that Macron's popularity as president had hit an all time low of just 22%, while Barnier's popularity sat more comfortably at 36%, down from 40 percent in October.

Moreover, when we compare both their approval ratings from September, 25 percent for Macron versus 45 percent for Barnier, we find a 20 percentage point gap, the largest ever between a sitting president and prime minister. So what does this all mean for France now? Well, there have already been plenty of calls for Macron to resign, from both the left and the right.

La France Insoumise's Clémence Guetté said in a post on X that the resignation of Emmanuel Macron is the only way out of this political crisis. And the party's former leader, Jean Luc Mélenchon, said Macron must go to restore the voice of the French people's [02:16:00] votes. Similarly, Bardella and Le Pen took aim at Macron and Les Macronistes.

With Bardella posting on X, there is no way out for a government that takes up the thread of Macronism. However, Macron has made clear that he has no intention of resigning from the presidency. Moreover, France can't have another legislative election until at least next summer, as there has to be a year in between, meaning the parliamentary chaos is likely to continue for a good while longer.

With Barnier gone, Macron will now have to appoint another new PM, who might have to be from the left. But this would be bad news for France's bond markets and for its debt crisis.

Macron faces criticism for defending French troops being in Africa - DW News -Air Date 1-7-25

DW HOST: Well, French President Emmanuel Macron is facing criticism for his recent comments defending the presence of French troops in Africa. France is in the process of withdrawing troops from Chad and several other countries. Macron sparked a backlash from several African leaders accusing them of failing to say to French troops battling Islamist insurgencies.

EMMANUEL MACRON: [02:17:00] We had a secure relationship. In truth, it was in two parts. One part was our commitment to fighting terrorism since 2013. We were right. I think some have forgotten to say thank you, but that's okay, it'll come in time. I'm in a good position to know that ingratitude is a disease that cannot be transmitted to humans.

But I say this for all the African governments who've not had the courage in the face of public opinion to bear it. That none of them would be in a sovereign country today if the French army had not been deployed in this region.

DW HOST: French President Macron is getting a lot of pushback for his statement suggesting a lack of gratitude for France's military involvement in Africa.

Chad's top diplomat says Macron has to learn to respect Africans. So does he have a point there? I asked Beverly Ochiang. Security analyst in Dhaka.

BEVERLY OCHIENG: I mean, yes, there have been very strong reactions. And even from Senegal, when the prime minister said that there were no talks [02:18:00] with France, and he also evoked the memory of West African forces who did fight with France during the world war. So it does feel that they are returning Macron's comments back at him, that African forces also did make significant sacrifices during the world war.

And France was merely giving in. Similar support to the African countries that had called on it to come in. Some of the things that Macron has been saying over the years are partly what have fueled anti French commentators, for instance. They've used comments such as that to reinforce ideas that France continues to have what is seen as a paternalistic attitude.

Towards Africans and African leaders who have made some sovereign choices, as we have seen in statements by Cote d'Ivoire recently, Chad, Senegal and even the Sahel, despite the acrimony behind it.

DW HOST: Now, French soldiers have been deployed to help fight against jihadists in the Sahel region. How do you see their withdrawal impacting security in the [02:19:00] region?

BEVERLY OCHIENG: The three countries have embarked on their own separate campaigns to recruit into their security forces. They're also forming what is called the Alliance of Sahel States to partly combat the insurgency, but violence has continued to spread.

A few anecdotes that just reflect this is in the last year there's been a resurgence of attacks in Benin and Togo. These are countries that years before did not experience militant insurgencies and these are near the border with Niger and Burkina Faso. Last September, Mali's capital Bamako came under attack and this was after a progressive two year period where al Qaeda militants have been moving towards the city.

South. So the Sahel armies are quite stretched and the withdrawal of French forces was quite sudden and acrimonious, which meant that there wasn't a clear handover of services, intelligence or training and support.

DW HOST: Okay. In some countries in Africa though, uh, where France had a military presence, um, they, these countries still maintain relations with Paris.

It was less acrimonious. [02:20:00] The, uh, departure of French troops talking Ivory Coast, Senegal, Chad, for example, how does the departure of French troops Fit into their geopolitical calculations.

BEVERLY OCHIENG: I mean for Senegal, it's been very clear. They are promoting nationalist policies Fire the president said in november last year that the presence of french forces does not sit well alongside sovereignty and nationalism With court devoy, it's a bit more.

Um, it's the implications are much more they're having an election this year Um Alassane Watara has in many instances been seen as being too close to France. Him making that announcement asserts that Cote d'Ivoire is in a good position to take over its security, despite the fact that there has been an insurgency in the Sahel.

It's a vote of confidence. Relations will probably continue to be quite warm, particularly with Cote d'Ivoire and France, commercial, security, and even diplomatic. With Senegal, there might be some tensions, given the statements that came from both SONCO and [02:21:00] FAE, With Chad, less so because we have seen the statement from the foreign minister was quite stern and the incremental statements from the government have shown that there might be some strange relations which might lead to some challenges, especially for French commercial operators.

We're looking to stay or operate in Chad.

DW HOST: Now, some countries in the West, uh, some in the United States, Europe, uh, have concerns that other international players like China or Russia particularly could end up filling the gaps left by France's withdrawal. What do you make of that?

BEVERLY OCHIENG: I mean, as it stands, various countries in the region are already building new partnerships.

Senegal's President Fay said that he will be working across East, West, China, Turkey, Russia, Chad. Establishing very strong ties with the United Arab Emirates, Russia, Hungary will be sending forces to the region. Devoye is also hoping for support [02:22:00] from the U. S., so there will be a diversification. Russia will take advantage, definitely, not just in security, but even commercially, but we'll see a broad range of partners emerging in the region over the coming years.

Why are more Francophone countries cutting ties with France? - Focus on Africa - Air Date 1-2-25

AUDREY BROWN - HOST, FOCUS ON AFRICA: France was one of the major colonizers of the continent over several decades, reaching a high point in the 19th century. The relationship was brutal involving slavery and resistance. Two major wars in Europe. Brought about massive changes, including an end to direct domination. Independence followed 1960 was a particularly pivotal year in which many former French and British colonies began to govern themselves, but the colonial links continued with language, culture, economic, and political ties of varying strengths.

France maintained a particularly strong grip to the extent of controlling monetary policy, political direction, and. Retaining a military presence, France also [02:23:00] maintained direct control of some territories like Réunion and Mayotte, which has been in the news recently because of a devastating cyclone.

We'll be hearing about visceral anger directed at French President Macron, who was visiting the island earlier this week. But let's get back to French speaking West Africa, where there was always resistance to French control, with some countries more vocal about it than others. We'll In recent months, there's been a major shift.

Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger have ordered French troops off their soil. Observers saw that coming. But now, unexpectedly, Ivory Coast, Senegal, and Chad are doing the same. I've been hearing from Adama Gay, an African analyst, that there's a deep well of anger and resentment behind these moves. I began our conversation by asking why France had a military presence in all these countries in the first place.

ADAMA GAYE: [02:24:00] Oh, because France negotiated what is called the colonial pact. When France left its former colonies, He had agreed with all of them to do certain things in a form of continuation of the French presence in those countries. And this is exactly one of them. Both are the level of military, monetary, and other sectors, including in the selection of African leaders of those countries.

France maintained that he had a say. On those crucial issues, and that's what is unravelling at the moment.

AUDREY BROWN - HOST, FOCUS ON AFRICA: So was it much more powerful than in the other former colonial powers? Because the influence certainly remained amongst the British colonies, for instance. But was France more specific and more powerful than that?

ADAMA GAYE: Absolutely. France Maintained what is called the France, Africa. It was an osmosis [02:25:00] relationship between France and it's a former colonies. So it left the continent without truly leaving the continent. And in many of these countries, France. Was the factor ruler. And we knew for many years that under, for instance, the leadership of Jacques Foucault, France really was the true owner of these countries.

But now we are witnessing a new wind blowing in many of the francophone countries with the youngsters. Influenced by the internet and other sources of information beyond the traditional classic governmental source of information. Those youngsters claiming for sovereignty for their countries and they are learning from what is happening elsewhere.

And they are selecting their type of leaders. They want to emulate the likes of Lumbumba of the DRC, the likes of Thomas Sankara and other nationalist [02:26:00] leaders. That's the model that they want to copy, and that's what they are following through. And now we are witnessing this sentiment of anti French against all over the francophone area with what we used to call the precarious.

It's no longer the same. Valid people want to gain truly their independence, and they're asking for it.

AUDREY BROWN - HOST, FOCUS ON AFRICA: Thomas Sankara was from what's now known as Burkina Faso, and Patrice Lumumba was the first post independence leader of Zaire, as it was at the time, rather than the Democratic Republic of Congo. Those leaders were quite strongly independent.

Sankara, especially in this, in the 80s. Was it similar? To what is happening now, this resistance to French influence in the politics of individual and regional African countries?

ADAMA GAYE: To a large extent, yes. Personally, I met Thomas Sankara a few months before his death. He died, killed [02:27:00] on October 15, 1987. I met him in February at his home, and I could find in him a fierce nationalist who wanted his country to be free.

To cut every tie with the French, and I saw him challenging the former French president, uh, Mr Francois Mitterrand. What is happening now is really something that is, uh, offspring of the, uh, globalization movement of the technological revolution that is happening. So these new leaders. They are in a position where they can build ties with other type minded people like the chemists and other people like them.

You name it. Many across Africa want their leaders to To leave power because they have seen that their ties with the French government have not yielded anything in terms of economic [02:28:00] development, in terms of freedom, in terms of even the chance of being tied with France, including traveling to France.

They are denied visa, they are expelled, they feel racism when they go to Europe, especially in this time of populism across Europe. So at the end of the day, the reality is that. Many African, not just those nationalistic people, but also the ordinary Africans are realizing that, by the way, we are not gaining anything in this relationship with France.

And they are seeing that France itself is a country that is decaying. We see it on a regular basis. The economy is down. The politics is in shambles. So the African people are saying, By the way, we have our resources. We have the intellect. We have everything to manage ourselves and we can learn from other nations of the global south from Malaysia to China.

And so why can't you cut the tide with the French and try to build our relationship? This self [02:29:00] conscience that is happening is changing the situation in many of these countries.

AUDREY BROWN - HOST, FOCUS ON AFRICA: So is it driven from the streets? Or is it driven from the corridors of power? Because just looking at it, the countries that are kicking the French out militarily because we need to come on to exactly the extent to which these ties are being severed.

But Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso have recently experienced coups. So that's a very particular form of government. Ivory Coast and Senegal are different forms of government. So I'm just wondering, is this impulse being driven by the same kinds of forces or are there different things at play?

ADAMA GAYE: Mainly the street is behind this move, but the social media, the internet played a key role in it.

And the mistakes by the French leaders, the types of Emmanuel Macron, Francois Hollande, they've been saying that France would stop. It's the France Africa policies, but in reality, they were playing [02:30:00] tricks and not practicing what they preach. So in many of the countries, people are saying, Let's call this bluff off and really address the challenge in earnest with whoever is in place in France.

In addition, you have also the rise of the far right in France with Marine Le Pen and other nationalistic and also from the left with Melenchon saying that, okay, we need to change our ties with the African countries. Furthermore, what is happening also, the leadership itself in many of those countries, they realize that if they don't make a move, they will be cut off from the street.

So they have been negotiating with the French authorities a way of exiting in a tactful manner. Some did it. In a brutal manner, like the military of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger. In the case of Cote d'Ivoire, the president, Mr. Ouattara, said clearly that it was an [02:31:00] orderly and negotiated way of cutting this tie, exiting the French military.

In the case of Senegal, to a large extent, that is what is happening also. But they could not do but follow the street. Mainly, the street is calling for it, and the intelligentsia also is opportunistically following suit.

SECTION E: CORPORATE CONTROL

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: You've reached Section E, Corporate Control.

DeepSeek AI Exposes Tech Oligarchy's Multi-Billion Dollar Scam - The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder - Air Date 1-28-25

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: It's a, just another tech bubble, right? It's another, it is our tech industry, which had like buoyed our economy really from the nineties on.

There was obviously a, uh, uh, uh, But since then, honestly, both parties have been complicit, uh, in, uh, Elevating this industry because it's one of, like, since the United States has outsourced manufacturing in the back half of the 20th century, this is essentially what the American economy is built on. And it's just such a, uh, it's a shot across the bow from [02:32:00] China, but it also is a very revealing indicator of the charlatans on that side.

Sam Altman in this open AI model, um, it says open in the name, but they do not. Uh, they are not transparent. They have basically privatized their AI model and not made public.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: DeepSeek is actually open, uh, source.

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: DeepSeek is open source and anybody can download it on their, uh, on their iPhone. And it was one of the most downloaded apps, I think, over the past few days.

Because of that very reason. It's a superior model because it's actually open and not just there to inflate the stock value of these tech companies and to get more money for investment. And so you can see how the efficiency model is just such a false premise. It's just there to get more money for these tech oligarchs.

And this would be I guess just something to laugh at if these oligarchs weren't a part of the Trump administration. And if we didn't see things like this, which [02:33:00] is Chuck Schumer basically saying, Oh, we're going to get on top of this. Chuck Schumer tweeted the deep seek announcement from China has been called by some AI Sputnik moment for America.

It's precisely why I made AI a top priority in the last Congress and we'll keep at it. And you know who he's echoing there? One Mark Andreessen, who, when I was researching this, found out has a. Uh, blocked me, which is great. Uh, Mark Andreessen said on January 26th, so two days ago, DeepSeek R1 is AI's Sputnik moment.

What? I mean, of course Andreessen wants. More U. S. taxpayer dollars poured into AI and analogizing it to Sputnik and to the space race because that is exactly what all these tech oligarchs want. They want more and more billions of dollars funneled into their project even though they've shown how inefficient they are.

And we have the leader of the Democrats in the Senate more than happy to go along with this very notion. And

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I want to [02:34:00] be clear, you know, uh, Sputnik moment refers to when The Russians sent the first satellite into space and everybody in America was like, hey, wait, what what's going on here? you can do that and So at that point was it Truman or Eisenhower that gets on Television and basically says hey guys We're gonna start up a We're gonna start up our own basically space program And we're gonna do the, um, uh, we're, we're gonna start NASA at that point and understand that in that moment, the first Sputnik moment, , Eisenhower is like, um, we're gonna, that's basically the start of nasa. And the reason why I say this is that when. Chuck Schumer and Mark Andreessen say, uh, this is [02:35:00] our Sputnik moment. When they say that in 2025, what they're saying is, we should give a lot of cash to private companies.

As opposed to the actual Sputnik moment, which was, we as a government are going to meet this moment. And develop this technology. Now, of course, a lot of that technology ended up being used by private enterprise. Uh, having essentially socialized the cost of developing these things and then privatizing the profits on which they built on.

Nevertheless, just be careful when they use Sputnik Moment and it's almost like a shell game. It's a Sputnik moment. And what's the whole thing then with giving the money to private enterprise?

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Also, we are Sputnik. I, the, the, the, we were the first to get on the moon in this space race, right? Like [02:36:00] that's considered.

The, the, the thing we beat the Russians at, or the Soviets at.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Well, they beat us into space now.

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: But they beat us into space, but our AI, you know, say, like, it's so advanced, like we, in theory, we beat them on AI and getting ahead of it, or at least that's what we were being told. But they've clearly created a superior product, and they're going to get there more quickly because of the open source model, because they are not enclosing it in such a way.

And. because everybody's going to be able to download it. So I'm making a prediction right now, and I'll expand this to Democrats as well, but Republicans are going to be saying that this is a national security threat in 48 hours. I'm sure that the Democrats will follow suit, a deep seek Chinese bioweapon leaked from a lab or something like that in order to pervert the minds of the American public, just like that communist TikTok.

Yep.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Countdown clock.

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: But these are the people running our government, right? Like when we talk about oligarchy, Isn't it incredible [02:37:00] how little we're mentioning these Republican politicians and we're just talking about these tech freaks? Because they're running the show. Yep. It's as obvious as anything.

Yep. And it happened almost overnight.

Will Trump Crash Economy On Purpose- Historian Explains DANGEROUS MAGA Plot - Thom Hartmann Program - Air Date 1-28-25

THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM : Democrats are pointing out that Trump's threats to increase our national debt by as much as 7 trillion, that is the cost of another round of tax cuts for billionaires, Shift billions of treasury dollars into crypto and impose tariffs on imported goods. Any one of those three things could cause an economic crash.

All three of them might be a perfect storm. And Trump seems unconcerned. And the Republicans. They're meeting down at Doral, at his shabby Doral Golf Club down in Florida today. Right now to, you know, plot what they're going to do. They don't seem to worry either. Now, to the average person, the idea of a recession is pretty grim.

I mean, you know, millions of people lose their jobs. People have to sell their 401ks at a loss out of desperation just to pay the rent and [02:38:00] buy food. Uh, you know, it's, it's a horror show for average people, particularly in a country where 54 percent of Americans right now live paycheck to paycheck. So why isn't Trump worried about this?

Why are Republicans not worried about this? Why are the billionaires who put Trump and the Republicans in power not worried about this? Well, the reason is very simple. There's three. big benefits to billionaires to having an economic crash. It's why Reagan had a crash. It's why Bush had a crash. It's, there's actually a benefit to it.

First, it's a great excuse to cut government services to, to, you know, and, and, and also to cut taxes on billionaires. You just say, hey, we need to cut taxes to stimulate the economy, we need to cut government services because there's no money to pay for them. I mean, Reagan did this in 81, George W. Bush did this in, in 2003, 2002, second, the second [02:39:00] reason is the time, times of economic crisis increased the tolerance for strongman governments.

FDR ran a strongman government, now it was one that everybody liked, but he was just You know, stomping all over Congress and doing things with executive orders that Republicans were screaming were unconstitutional. People were freaked out. They wanted a strong government. In Europe, Hitler used the Great Depression to, to, as the rationale for, for his enabling acts, which, you know, gave him rule by decree.

And it appears now that Trump IGs in violation of the law, these inspector generals. I'll get into that more later on in the program. But Uh, he's, he's defying the law or refusing to enforce the law in other cases right now, right in front of us, right in front of God and the world, and nobody is doing anything about it.

And he's getting away with it. And that promises that more will come and it'll get worse and worse and worse as time goes on. Secondly, [02:40:00] times of economic crisis, uh, you know, increase the need or the demand for strong man government. And in fact, this is where it's getting wild, um, 58%. of young people, generation Z people in the United States, say they trust social media more than traditional news.

45 percent now believe women have gained too many rights. The number of young men who believe that women have too much power in the United States has increased from 32 to 45 percent in just five years, while 52 percent say they trust what they, readers say, see on social media. And then third, and this is the big reason, billionaires love economic crashes.

I remember sitting in Gloria Swanson's apartment back in the 1980s having dinner with her and, uh, she was on the board of our, uh, children's village and, you know, every six months or so I'd go down to New York and we'd have dinner together in her apartment and she would just tell me these wild stories.[02:41:00]

And she told me this story, she was a vegetarian and I was a vegetarian and the program we ran was vegetarian, so we had this commonality. So anyhow, she told me this story about, uh, Joe Kennedy. John F. Kennedy's father, and he was her manager for a while, he was her lover for a while, and he robbed her blind, he ripped her off terribly.

But her story about him was that when the Great Depression started, he had bailed out of the market just a week or two before the crash happened, and that during the crash, as the market was going down, down, down, down, down, Joe Kennedy, who was really, really rich, was buying stocks. Why? Because it's a buying opportunity.

If you're really rich when the stock market crashes and all the little people are desperately selling all their stock just to pay for their rent and their food, you can buy that stock at a discount and suddenly you're the richest person on earth. Joe Kennedy made a fortune doing this. As did J. Paul [02:42:00] Getty.

He left his parents golden anniversary In 1929 to run down to Wall Street to buy stocks during the collapse and ended up one of the richest men in the world. In fact, the richest man in the world. He said it was the opportunity of a lifetime to get oil companies for practically nothing, which is exactly what he did.

And this is what we saw this during the Bush crash. During the Bush crash in 2007, home prices dropped 21%. This was when, you know, there's millions of homes now owned by big corporations, hedge funds and big corporations out of New York, investment vehicles. This was when most of them were purchased, or many of them.

Over 10 million Americans lost their homes to predators like Steve Mnuchin. The stock market lost over 50%. During the Bush crash, its all time peak was on October 9th, 2007 at 14, 164. It collapsed to 6, [02:43:00] 594. While 8 million Americans lost their jobs and were wiped out, the billionaires came in and started buying stocks that were being unloaded by working class people from their 401Ks, even though they had to pay a penalty.

Between 2009 and 2012, the bottom of the Bush crash and the beginning of the real recovery, The top 1 percent of Americans saw their income grow by over 31%, 95 percent of all income gains during that period were the top 1%. If you, the S& P went up 462 percent by 2020. If you had invested in 2009 a billion dollars, just 11 years later, you would have 4.

6 billion dollars. And then they did it again 10 years later during the Trump COVID crash. And this was, you know, again, the, the billionaires, became insanely wealthy. And they don't have to pay taxes on this money. I mean, the, the, just that one year, 2020, the world's [02:44:00] billionaires saw their wealth increase by a full 54%.

So here you've got Republicans down at Doral planning what they're going to do economically, governmentally, whatever, and how they're not going to hold Trump accountable for impounding money. I'll get to that in violation of the 1974 impoundment act. Um, and the They're planning to crash the economy. You got the debt ceiling coming, you got all this wild stuff, another tax cut.

They want to crash the economy. I'm telling you, hang on to your seat, it's going to get wild.

Trump's billionaires will accelerate American decline. Dr. Richard Wolff explains how. - The Real News Network - Air Date 1-28-25

RICHARD WOLFF: . When an economy is going up. The people at the top can afford to be generous. They're making a ton of money. They're becoming wealthy. Sure, they can pay an extra 4 5 percent a year to their workers. Keep them happy, avoid a strike, and there's so much money in the growth period that you can afford it.

But when the economy goes down, what the people at the [02:45:00] top have always done and are doing now in America is those at the top. The CEOs, the people who we all know who they are, they choose their wealth and power, shouldn't surprise you, to hold on. And because they have wealth and power, they can do that.

They can hold on, which means the costs of the downturn, we, the rest of us, it's offloaded onto us. So what you're seeing is that the inequality in the United States gets worse. And look at the irony. I'll give you a statistic. Earlier this week, the most important research outfit in the world, Oxfam, located in Britain, keeps track of this, gave their annual report, and it added up the experience of the roughly 3, 000 billionaires that exist in the world today.

And as you rightly said, [02:46:00] Many of them are American, not all by a long shot, but many of them. And here's the statistic it gave. Across the year 2024 just ended, the collective wealth of the 300 billionaires rose by over six billion dollars per day. Oh my god. That's incredible. Okay, so look what I'm telling you.

That's beautiful. Yeah. Capitalism as a global system is making those already super wealthy even more super wealthy.

STEPHEN JANIS - HOST, THE REAL NEWS NETWORK: Right, but what's amazing about it, extraordinary, is that you're saying as our economy declines, Lives get worse, their wealth gets more concentrated and higher. I mean, that's like really seems to me, uh, a horrible prescription for people.

Hmm.

RICHARD WOLFF: Unfortunately, if we had better leaders, they would be talking to us about it. [02:47:00] What are we going to do as a nation, the road we are on, of a declining empire, becoming more and more unequal. Look, you don't need rocket science to understand that's not sustainable. That situation is going to blow up and it's not gonna be pretty.

Not even in a country that didn't have everybody with a gun. We are a very strong and that's what our leaders should be talking about. What do we do about it? Instead, and I have to say this in all honesty. Instead, what I'm watching at the inauguration and in the days since. is a kind of lunatic theater.

It's a theater in which the lead actor, Mr. Trump, pretends to be the world's tough guy. I'm gonna take back the Panama Canal. What? [02:48:00] What? You're saying he's not? I'm gonna snatch Greenland for a golf course. I'm gonna make Canada the 51st state. And I'm gonna stick it to the Mexicans. My God. Every one of those issues, whether it's drug traffic or anything else, the war on drugs is at least 65, 70 years old.

Every president has announced he's going to fight it. And every single president has lost that fight. We are with drugs today. Every bit as much as when I was 10 years younger, 20 years younger. 30 years younger. I'm not fooled and I don't think anyone in America is. The biggest change in drugs is that we, the Sackler family, which just made a settlement, produced enough opioids to kill 700, 000 people over the last few years.

We don't even need Mexico. We've got a drug problem in which Mexico doesn't figure. And as the new president of Mexico [02:49:00] said, and she's quite right, The drug problem is a problem of supply and demand. Part of it is the supply that comes up in parts through Mexico, but an enormous part of it is the demand.

There is no drug trade unless America is the single largest buyer of that crap. We weren't doing it. I mean, what are you doing? He's trying to suggest. To a frightened America that the problem is over there. You're bad. Panamanian the bad canadian This is childish This is gestures of desperation You know, there's an old Scene that comes to my mind to explain this.

It's in the cowboy movies. We all saw when we were younger It's when the sheriff can't prevent the bad guys from riding into town and robbing the bank. And there he looks, useless sheriff, didn't stop it. So he says with great bravado, [02:50:00] Round up the usual suspects. He wants to look like he stopped. Because that's better than looking like the failure he was.

That's a really good point. Has been the president before let me assure you during his time as president Inequality in the united states by all its measures Got worse Now, I don't want to be unfair. They got worse under biden, too And they got worse under obama, too. So he's not outstanding. But did he stop it?

Not at all the tax cut that he gave in december of 2017.

STEPHEN JANIS - HOST, THE REAL NEWS NETWORK: Right.

RICHARD WOLFF: First year of his office was the worst blow to equality We could have had made the under made the government bankrupt because it didn't have all the revenue that Corporations and the rich no longer had to pay so the government had to borrow go in the deficit and who did it borrow from?

The corporations and the rich, [02:51:00] the money they didn't have to pay in taxes, they turned around and went to the government instead, which means we, the people are on the hook to repay all that money plus interest because our leader, Mr. Trump gave them that tax

cut.

But instead of being shamed, He goes around celebrating it, and we live in a country, and this scares me.

This is what scares me. It's pretty weird. It's pretty weird. Okay, you had a question? We live in a country of denial, and that, that is a very big danger we have to face.

TAYA GRAHAM - HOST, THE REAL NEWS NETWORK: Professor Wolf, I really appreciate that you brought up the historical context, talking about that perhaps we are in an age of decline.

When we were last on the show, we were talking about how we might be living in a second Gilded Age, but now what I'm hearing from you is that we are in Well, just like with the Gilded Age, that didn't end well. What does it look like for America to be an empire in decline? [02:52:00] Like, on the ground, for us regular folks trying to hold on to our jobs, what does the decline of empire actually look like for us?

RICHARD WOLFF: Well, I'm afraid it means that we are now governed by those people you saw up on the dais during the inauguration. The only dynamic center of the American capitalist system today is high tech, Silicon Valley. Those people now are the ones that are still making money. Everything else is either better done, or more cheaply done, or both.

Elsewhere. Indeed, the United States corporations moved ever since the 1970s in huge numbers. Look, half the cars produced in China now are produced by subsidiaries of American companies. The abandonment of America is something led by the corporations. You might, Mr. Trump likes to [02:53:00] point to the Chinese, but they didn't do it.

They couldn't make the corporations go there. Those corporations went there. Because it was profitable. Here's my fear. The United States's mass of working class people are being prepared to function the way the poor of the rest of the world function. They are the backwater. They are the hinterland.

They're what you see when you leave the capital city and you go to where the Mass of people are much, much poorer. Look at it. This government wants to attack Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. It wants to take away the few remaining supports. Look at us another way. When my fellow economists from around the world ask me.

They ask me about the minimum wage. [02:54:00] The federal minimum wage in this country is 7. 25 per hour. It has been at that level since 2009. Every year since then, prices have gone up. Some years only 1 or 2 percent, other years 9 or 10 percent. Okay, that means for the last 16 years, 2009 to now, the poorest of the poor amongst us, people living on 7.

25 an hour, have been savagely abused. Because every year, with rising prices, that 7. 25 buys you less. What kind of a society goes to people with 7. 25 and does that, to them. We are seeing levels of cruelty. [02:55:00]

SECTION F: WHAT COMES NEXT

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally, section F, what comes next?

Goodnight, Pax Americana: Neoliberalism and the decline of the US Empire w/ Radhika Desai Part 2 - The Red Nation Podcast - Air Date 9-22-23

NICK ESTES - HOST, THE RED NATION PODCAST: One of the sort of the way this, this manifests isn't just like in debates between, uh, you know, economists, it actually, you know, this is the 50th anniversary of the Chilean coup and the overthrow of Allende, Allende.

And you and I were both in Caracas and we went to, you know, the foreign ministry and we saw, you know, Allende's glasses on display, and it was a reminder. To Hugo Chavez that they're not going to do, uh, to the Bolivarian project, what they did to, uh, the Chilean project. And so can you talk a little bit about that?

Because I think, uh, most people have this conception of imperialism as when, yeah, when one country invades another country, or there's sort of military competition, or, you know, they, we just don't like. Communists or we just don't like left projects. Um, or that these, these people are dictators. What is the, you know, you said it, you said a neoliberalism is an ideology and how does [02:56:00] that ideology manifest in, uh, sort of foreign intervention?

RADHIKA DESAI: I actually, that's a really brilliant question because what it does is it focuses attention both on how Chile because one of the, in fact, well, first. Uh, kind of experimented neoliberalism, but also why it was so. So let's begin with the first. So your neoliberalism of the post Second World War period, it was sort of straight line because the dominant, uh, persuasion was Keynesianism and governments thought that You know, they could use Keynesian, uh, uh, uh, economics and, and, and so on.

And it was not that governments, you know, they did this out of the kindness of their heart. The fact of the matter is that in the post Second World War period, working class movements were very strong. They had mobilized over a whole century. Uh, they had acquired the most exceptional power during the wars, because if you want to ask people to go and fight for you, you have to promise them something.

So in that sense, you know, that was that empowerment. But neoliberalism sort of continued its existence in a subterranean [02:57:00] level in these marginalized think tanks and so on. And in particular, uh, by the early 70s, people like Milton Friedman and the University of Chicago were beginning to push it more and more energetically, particularly because the crisis of capitalism was upon the world, uh, and so this was the opening which, through which they would sort of come through.

Um, so, uh, The coup against Allende in Chile was, of course, it was against a social democratic, some would say socialist government. Uh, so that makes sense. You know, the United States is fighting communism everywhere, and we'll come back to that in a second. But the coup in Chile was essentially, as everybody now knows, as People like John Pilger have recorded in wonderful documentaries that the U.

S. A. was definitely behind it. They encouraged the coup. And it wasn't just that they wanted a government to take power, but they wanted the Pinochet government to implement neoliberal policies. Now, why do they want to implement neoliberal policies? Was it because Allende was a communist? I think really in order to understand the Cold War.

The opposition to [02:58:00] communism, you really have to put it in the larger history of imperialism. What do I mean by that? So basically, you know, uh, and by the way, some version of free markets and free trade has been the dominant ideology of most countries. So in the mid, in the 19th century, when Britain was the most powerful country, they advocated free trade to everybody.

Right. Now, why is that? It's not that Britain always scrupulously practice free trade. That is not it. It wants other countries to practice free trade. Why? Because essentially what imperialism needs and wants, apart from controlling societies and so on, what is the purpose of that? And so it is really to open up these societies to the interest, to capitalist interests from first world countries, from the imperialists.

And this is very important to understand. You want to open up these societies. You don't want them to do what is really necessary, which is to, uh, Practice various forms of [02:59:00] protection and state direction in order to develop your economies, because in the history of capitalism, we know that actually contrary to the idea of free trade, the only way in which countries have developed is by actually not opening up, but at least selectively closing.

We're not talking about autarky, but selectively closing your national economy, regulating the inflow and outflow of trade. Inflow and outflow of capital, uh, in order that you can develop your economy. Because if you simply open up your economy, what happens is that, uh, goods from elsewhere, which are produced more cheaply, simply front your markets.

Your own enterprises don't get a chance to to to to produce and so on and in the end it doesn't work really for everybody but the imperialism always wants to open up economies which is why some version of free trade has always been the dominant ideology and this is why they wanted to impose that on uh on Chile because I, the Ahinti government had other ideas.

They had the, uh, the [03:00:00] temerity to think that they could run the Chilean economy in the interest of ordinary Chilean people, and to try to develop their productive capacity and so on and so forth. So in that sense, you know, uh, the purpose of neoliberalism, so, so, so the cornwall, Anticommunism. So, so to understand that is where you have to understand that if governments must always intervene to, uh, to develop their economies, as was seen, for example, in the development of countries like Germany or Japan, or even the United States in its early days, right, just massive state intervention in order to develop because If they had not, the dominant country of that time was Britain and British goods would have simply flooded all markets and not allowed those currencies to develop.

But by the early 20th century, you also began to see the emergence with the Bolshevik revolution. of communist attempts to develop the economy so that, you know, in Russia, it was not possible to allow capitalism to do it as it was in Germany or on the final thing. [03:01:00] So you now saw an alternative way of development, which also involved massive state intervention, and which, by the way, was tremendously successful.

By the end of the 1930s, Russia had already become the second most industrial country in the world. So imagine that, you know, what, uh, and this was done. without the privilege of imperialism. This was done even though most of the capitalist countries were trying to oppose Russia's industrialization. And of course, today we see that in the case of China.

So, uh, so I would say that, uh, the whole purpose of it. So, so, so essentially the anti communism of the Cold War was also a form of imperialism. The point was that And we should not try to develop in this way. The examples of Russia and China should not be imitated by other countries. So the Cold War itself should be seen as a chapter in the long work history of imperialism.

Globalization Is Fracturing. So What Comes Next? - Bloomberg Originals - Air Date 11-9-23

ENDA CURRAN: So right now the world economy is said to be at something of an inflection point.

STEPHANIE FLANDERS: It's a rethinking of globalization and to some extent of regionalization [03:02:00] and it changes everything.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: We're in the midst of a serious financial crisis.

ENDA CURRAN: So in the years after the financial crisis, the conventional western economic capitalist led model came under a lot of scrutiny given the impact that that crisis had on ordinary people.

SHAWN DONNAN: And in 2016, we saw a vote for Brexit, an exit from the European Union.

In the UK and the election of Donald Trump in the U. S.

ENDA CURRAN: That, in extension, triggered a big trade war between China and the U. S.

SHAWN DONNAN: We've seen a global pandemic that has tested those global supply chains and that has led a lot of countries to rethink offshoring production. We're seeing war in the Middle East.

We are seeing coups in Africa. And those conflicts are leading people to question even more the benefits of globalization.

ARCHIVE NEWS CLIP: It was unprovoked, but this is what Russian President Vladimir Putin unleashed on Ukraine.

Explosions [03:03:00] rocking several cities, including the capital of Kiev. Russia's invasion of Ukraine was a sort of crystallizing moment for people on both sides of this emerging divide in the global economy.

SHAWN DONNAN: In 2022 at the United Nations, we had a series of votes over condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

BOB RAE: This is illegal invasion. It is illegal occupation. It is a legal annexation, all at gunpoint.

SHAWN DONNAN: Roughly two thirds of the global economy, led by the United States, voted to condemn Russia. The remaining third, we saw countries either abstain or vote to reject any condemnation.

We're seeing billions of dollars in investment in new factories that is now being guided by geopolitics rather than simply economics. And that is really seen when you dig down into the United Nations vote. In 2022, we saw 1. 2 trillion in foreign direct investment in the world. We also [03:04:00] saw 180 billion of that shift from the bloc that refused to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine to the US led bloc condemning Russia's invasion.

The International Monetary Fund found that if you had a full fracturing of the global economy, you would eliminate 7 percent of global GDP. That doesn't sound like much, but it is equivalent to wiping out the French and German economies together.

ENDA CURRAN: China remains, of course, the world's factory floor. It offers scale that no one else does.

Sentiment towards investing there has turned quite negative in recent years.

STEPHANIE FLANDERS: But there's a whole network of global trade that is resting on the interrelationships that have developed between the US and China over the last 20 or 30 years. Many people refer to it as, you know, I'm making the omelette. If you're an American company, you're still going to be very reliant on many things made in China for many years to come.

ENDA CURRAN: There is a [03:05:00] group of economies who are navigating the middle of this geopolitical divide. You can call them the connector economies. They're not in the game of choosing sides. They're attracting factories from the US, factories from China, often located close by or in the same industrial park. They're importing from China, they're selling to the West or vice versa.

STEPHANIE FLANDERS: They can take advantage of their neutrality to get benefits from both sides in this emerging rivalry.

SHAWN DONNAN: In northern Vietnam, you can drive an hour from the Chinese border and into what was once a farm field with water buffaloes and banana trees, you're seeing big factories go up.

Over the last five years, we've seen exports from Vietnam to the United States double. But at the same time, we've seen imports from China into Vietnam double as well.

Places like Poland are now getting huge investment from China and South Korea. And [03:06:00] even U. S. chip makers, as they set themselves up as a link between Europe and the rest of the world.

We're also seeing places like Indonesia, which has vast natural resources, bring together Ford, the U. S. automaker, and Chinese companies, and Brazilian miners. to exploit nickel mines to sell into China or to sell into the United States.

STEPHANIE FLANDERS: If you're a country like Morocco that has a free trade agreement with America, and you already have also quite good relations with China, well then obviously you're in a position to play both sides.

ENDA CURRAN: Mexico is perfectly placed to cash in on this so called fragmentation sitting right on the U. S. border. It's a textbook example of nearshoring but Mexico is also attracting a lot of Chinese investment and that's why it's able to straddle both sides of this divide.

MEXICAN BUSINESS OWNER: Plenty of people talking about what's the sales made in China can sell in the future made in Mexico.

And, uh, right now

we've got the potential. If we get our act [03:07:00] together to get all those consumer goods, electronic consumer goods that went into China to be manufactured in Mexico.

ENDA CURRAN: To be clear, these connector economies in some cases have a long way to go before they have the necessary infrastructure in place.

Motorways, ports, electricity networks. These are all key features that global manufacturers want and need. China, of course, has excelled at that for decades. These other economies are now trying to catch up.

SHAWN DONNAN: We're at the very beginning of this story. The reality is we're not seeing the end of globalization, but we are seeing a reshaping of the global economy. It's an incredibly interlinked global economy that we live in.

ENDA CURRAN: Business will continue to be done. Money will continue to flow around the world. And even though there will be tensions at a government to government level, companies will look for a way around those political divides.

SHAWN DONNAN: But how this happens and the direction we go in the years to come is really going to shape all of our lives.

Decolonization as Advocacy, Pt. 2 w/ Lydia Walker - American Prestige - Air Date 1-28-25

LYDIA WALKER: States in [03:08:00] waiting is my term, but it's a term that many of my interlocutors have found resonant, that they find it, uh, kind of a useful frame, uh, for thinking about their own movements.

And when people who work on other states in waiting, you know, particularly, uh, you know, Kurds, or, um, you know, people working on Biafra, uh, And there's so many others you could it's kind of an endless category If when they find it resonant, then that's excellent. Uh, but these histories are also quite particular Um elsewhere i've written about tibet and tibetan's use of advocacy uh and how um Transnational advocacy emanating from india and the united states ends up turning the tibetan nationalist claim into a humanitarian commodity Um, so that this is you know The, the, the relationship between advocacy and claims making [03:09:00] transform is mutually transformative and it can also be mutually undermining.

So states and waiting really shows how it can be mutually undermining, uh, whereby the end, it's kind of the, uh, inherent weakness of the n claim that makes them reliant on. Advocacy for so long, while movements that become states like Zambia, they, you know, cut their ties with their former advocates, um, when they're no longer useful.

And then, of course, that no longer, lack of utility then means that the advocates have to move on to other things. Other projects. Um, so, you know, but at the same time, I mean, we see there remain lots of states in waiting. Uh, they use transnational advocacy networks. They call them other things in the political science literature often is referred to as rebel diplomacy.

Uh, so then this actual engagement [03:10:00] continues. And, um, I think that it's, We need to think about the relationship between the two because they're not the same thing and they don't necessarily have the same aim. Uh, but then who is, who has the upper hand? They also change over time, though generally it's the advocates, uh, not the claimants.

DANIEL BESSNER - HOST, AMERICAN PRESTIGE: And then just a final question, obviously decolonization is a process that is ongoing, but I think it's fair to say it's major moments past. What is the state of this process in the 2020s? Where does it stand today? And what, what could we quote unquote learn not in a lesson sense, but in terms of understanding the world from your research?

LYDIA WALKER: So I end, uh, States in Waiting with, um, indigenous claims making. And how some Nagas, not all, but some have turned to [03:11:00] a language of global indigeneity to make claims in international politics. The UN has a, uh, 2007. uh, declaration on the rights of indigenous populate, uh, indigenous peoples. And in some ways you can chart a kind of an interesting trajectory from the declaration of grant on the granting of independence in 1960 through the friendly nations, uh, declaration that kind of really limits.

Uh, the kinds of peoples that can claim independence, uh, through, uh, the UN, uh, Declaration on Indigenous Peoples, which I argue really separates self determination from sovereignty. Because what it does, it says that now the United Nations can recognize all these kinds of non state self determinations.

But they're not sovereignty. And that's separate. So that's kind of a huge change, [03:12:00] uh, from, uh, the world of the 1960s. Uh, but also that these claimants are really practical. Uh, they are going to, you know, they're going to make claims based on nationalism, human rights, humanitarianism, uh, indigeneity that they can get traction with in international politics.

Uh, and these are claims of autonomy. These are, uh, claims of, um, self determination. Uh, but who is the political self in question that gets to determine that? And, uh, and most importantly for my own work as an international historian, what is the international context in which they're doing it? Uh, and how that does change over time.

Pretty radically, but the claims themselves often do not.

Why Oligarchy Falls (And How to Speed It Up) - Legendary Lore - Air Date 1-13-25

HOST, LEGENDARY LORE: Think about what happens when any group or individual becomes too comfortable in a position of power.

At first, they try to justify their privileges, their job creators. They do it [03:13:00] for the people. They are saving the economy. Think of the children, and so on. But gradually, something shifts. The justifications become thinner, more perfunctory. Eventually, they stop bothering to justify at all. Public resources become their personal piggy bank, public institutions their private tool set, and public concerns are barely worth acknowledging.

This is exactly when they look strongest on the surface. They've got everything under their control. The money, the power, everything. Look at how the Thirty Tyrants controlled Athens. They had all the weapons, all the wealth, total formal authority. They thought they were showing strength by ruthlessly eliminating critics, hoarding wealth, and crushing dissent.

Yet they were creating the perfect conditions for their own overthrow. What makes this pattern so important is how it reveals the paradox of power. Strength becoming weakness. Control breeding its own instability. When those in charge respond to challenges by becoming more controlling, they often [03:14:00] accelerate their own decline.

Their harsh policies alienate potential allies. Their visible excesses create silent resentment. Their internal rivalries fracture their unity. Think of it like holding sand. The tighter you squeeze, the more it slips through your fingers. The more they crush descent, the more they create the conditions for their own undoing.

They lose touch with reality. Lose critical feedback. Lose the legitimate authority that originally let them govern. It's not that they become weak. They still have all the surface power. But they become brittle. And that brittleness, more than any external enemy, is what ultimately threatens their rule.

But perhaps most importantly for those watching closely, this pattern reveals moments of opportunity for the oppressed. Because understanding these phases is not just about predicting decline, it's about recognizing opportunities. Each phase has its own vulnerabilities, its own pressure points, and its own possibilities for transformation.

And this brings us to the crucial question. How do you recognize when [03:15:00] a system is entering its vulnerable phases? What subtle signs signal that change might be possible? Because, as Aristotle observed, timing often matters more than strength. So how do we know when change is nigh for oligarchy, specifically?

Aristotle observed several critical indicators that often converge to create what we could call a perfect storm. The first sign is perhaps the most obvious, yet often misunderstood. When public dissatisfaction flares up, it's not really the volume of complaints that matters. It's their nature. The oligarchs can handle protests against a new tax on farmland.

They can manage complaints about inflation. And they love when isolated issues like minimum wages or subsidies release some pent up steam. But Aristotle observed that while a state can handle many types of protests, the real danger comes when people stop believing the state serves its proper end, the good life and virtue of its citizens.[03:16:00]

So, when protests shift from specific grievances to fundamental questions of justice, not just, is this fair, but is our whole system serving its purpose? That's when things are about to boil over. This total erosion of legitimacy typically happens in three distinct but interconnected ways. First, while Aristotle recognized the importance of private property, he warned against the wealthy treating common things as their own.

Like when public spaces become effectively private, when shared infrastructure serves only elite interests, when common goods like water, and in our times, airwaves and digital networks, become de facto personal property of the economic political class. Second, Aristotle was particularly concerned when the laws and customs that the oligarchs themselves established start being ignored whenever convenient.

They impose austerity on the masses while they themselves live in luxury. They praise competition until they need to crush rivals. They talk about innovation while [03:17:00] blocking new ideas that might threaten their position. As Aristotle noted, this hypocrisy undermines the very foundation of law which should apply equally to all.

Third, and perhaps most fundamentally, when rulers become disconnected from the virtues and values they're supposed to exemplify. Aristotle believed that legitimate rule required not just wealth or power, but moral excellence. If oligarchs from their isolated positions push radical social transformations while being entirely disconnected from their impacts on ordinary communities, if they advocate for fundamental changes to how people live, work, and live.

All while being insulated from the consequences of these changes, they hold in contempt the very cultural traditions and social bonds that most communities consider essential to their way of life. The gap becomes no longer just economic, but moral and cultural. This triple erosion of public resources, of rules for thee, not for me, and of shared cultural values [03:18:00] creates a fundamental crisis of legitimacy.

But the thing is, Aristotle observed that public dissatisfaction alone rarely triggers change. What makes a moment truly critical is when it combines with internal division among the ruling class itself. While studying different city states, he noticed that oligarchies often fall, not from external pressure, But from disputes among those in power.

For example, between different business interests, preventing them from presenting a united front. When oligarchs start infighting over market regulations or resource control, they create openings they'd never allow if united. And the final crucial sign of changing winds is the emergence of new leaders and voices.

But not always where you'd expect. The crucial voices often don't come from traditional opposition. They come from entrepreneurs who've built independent economic power, from respected professionals who've stayed above factional disputes, and from people who can bridge different social [03:19:00] classes and interest groups.

Crucially, Aristotle observed that change leading to a more just system, rather than change to some other oligarchy or tyranny, must involve the middle class. Positive change has to come through those who occupy a middle position between extremes of wealth and poverty, those who have enough property to be independent, but not so much as to be corrupted by luxury.

What makes the middle class effective is their ability to combine virtue with practical wisdom. They aren't typically the most radical voices calling for revolution, nor are they part of the established oligarchy. Instead, they are ordinary people who understand both what is good and what is possible, a combination Aristotle saw as essential for any meaningful political change.

Most importantly, leaders representing the middle class succeed because they understand what Aristotle considered the true purpose of the state. Not just stability or wealth, but the good life that comes through the practice of virtue. [03:20:00] So how does this help us understand when and how to act?

Interpreting Aristotle's observations suggests a few crucial approaches. First, build alternative sources of power. They don't need to, and probably shouldn't, be direct confrontations with oligarchic authority. Instead, focus on creating independent economic networks, developing new technologies, or establishing cultural institutions that operate outside traditional power structures.

Think of it as building a parallel system, rather than directly confronting the existing one. This is exactly what emerging merchant classes did in many Greek cities, gradually accumulating influence through trade networks that the traditional power base couldn't control as easily. Second, form intentional coalitions but not the kind you might imagine.

Successful challenges to entrenched power rarely come from single interest groups. Instead, effective transformations happen when different people find common cause. Consider [03:21:00] how in many Greek city states, the emerging commercial class often allied with small farmers against the traditional landed upper class.

Today, this could, for example, mean bringing together tech innovators frustrated by monopolistic practices, traditional businesses, and middle class citizens seeking economic stability and a normal life. Third, understand and exploit system weaknesses. When oligarchies abuse their power, they create openings.

Think about it this way, every time oligarchs break their own stated principles, they create what we might call legitimacy gaps, or a discrepancy between the expectations of how leaders should act and how they actually act. The key is matching your response to their specific contradictions. When they champion meritocracy while practising nepotism, document and publicise clear cases of unearned privilege.

When they compromise courts, utilise dispute resolution systems. When they preach free markets but [03:22:00] practise monopoly, rally the natural coalition of small business owners crushed by unfair competition and consumers tired of inflated prices. Your responses should not only challenge existing power, but demonstrate a better way forward.

Turn their contradictions into stepping stones toward positive change. Each of these compensating moves creates new vulnerabilities, new contradictions, and new potential points of leverage. As Archimedes said, Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it and I shall move the world.

Fourth, and this is crucial, develop political virtue. It's not just about personal morality, it's about building the capacity for effective action. An oligarchy's greatest weakness often lies in its inability to generate genuine loyalty or collective purpose. They rule through power rather than legitimate authority.

Your advantage is the ability to create genuine communities of interest and purpose. Last but perhaps most important, cultivate what we [03:23:00] might call strategic patience. It's easy to swallow the proverbial black pill when things seem hopeless. But remember, oligarchies often appear strongest just before they begin to crack.

Their very efforts to maintain absolute control frequently generate the conditions for their own transformation.

Credits

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: That's going to be it for today. As always, keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about today's topic or our upcoming topics. We're going to be looking at the shifting landscape of the media as corporations attempt to position themselves to avoid attacks from Trump, and the suddenly obvious emergence of oligarchy both at home and abroad. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at 202-999-3991. You can now reach us on the privacy-focused messaging app, Signal, at the username BestoftheLeft.01. There's a link in the show notes for that. Or simply email me to [email protected].

The additional sections of the show today included clips from [03:24:00] Uncivilized, Community Church of Boston, Geopolitical Economy Report, MacDecey Street, The New Statesman, Vox, Macrodose, BBC News, The Europeans, The Bunker, TLDR News EU, DW News, Focus on Africa, The Majority Report, The Thom Hartmann Program, The Real News Network, The Red Nation Podcast, Bloomberg Originals, and American Prestige. Further details are in the show notes.

And thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships. You can join them by signing up today at BestOfTheLeft.Com/Support, through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple [03:25:00] Podcast app. Membership is how you get instant access to our incredibly good and often funny weekly bonus episodes, in addition to there being no ads and chapter markers in all of our regular episodes, all through your regular podcast player. You'll find that link in the show notes along with a link to join our Discord community, where you can also continue the discussion. And don't forget to follow us on any and all new social media platforms you might be joining these days.

So coming to you from far outside the conventional wisdom of Washington, DC, my name is Jay!, and this has been the Best of the Left podcast, coming to you twice weekly, thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show from BestOfTheLeft.Com.

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#1687 Respite: Ceasefire in Gaza and the Legacy of Imperial Folly in the Middle East (Transcript)

Posted by · January 31, 2025 12:12 PM

Air Date 1/31/2025

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award -winning Best of the Left podcast.

The genocide and subsequent ceasefire in Gaza is only the latest horrifying consequence of botched military misadventures in the Middle East. And if the history of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay prisons can teach us anything, it's that atrocities have long shadows.

For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our Top Takes in about 50 minutes today includes The Socialist Program, American Prestige, Behind the News, Revolutionary Left Radio, CounterSpin, and Democracy Now! Then in the additional Deeper Dives half of the show, there will be more in four sections: Section A, The Deal; Section B, Ceasefire Politics; Section C, The Empire; and Section D, Now What?

Gaza Ceasefire Explained Reading Between The Lines - The Socialist Program - Air Date 1-16-25

BRIAN BECKER - HOST, THE SOCIALIST PROGRAM: There's a lot to talk about. What does Biden say about the agreement? What does Donald Trump say about the agreement? What does Netanyahu and the Israelis say about the [00:01:00] agreement? Again, what did the regional actors say about it? Okay, and we want to talk about what the Palestinian people say, and the Palestinian resistance forces. We want to hear their voices. You know, the United States characterizes every Palestinian resistance organization as a terrorist entity. So if you show solidarity with the Palestinian people, you're frequently labeled in the United States, as aiding and abetting terrorism. I mean, the U. S. said the same thing about the ANC and Nelson Mandela in South Africa up until 1988 and even beyond, actually. But I want for our audience to hear what the Palestinian resistance forces say about this agreement.

Now, first of all, it's a three stage agreement. I wanna go over the three stages with you, but let's first hear if you have it, what did Hamas say about it? What is Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian resistance group? What did the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine? All of these organizations, again, identified as terrorist entities [00:02:00] such that the US media and the US people never hear, or the US media never tells what they think, and the US people never hear what they think. But I want people to hear what they're saying about the ceasefire agreement.

LAYAN SIMA FULEIHAN: Absolutely. I think that's really important. Hamas has made (an) official statement and also has had a few speeches from different members of the political bureau. They have announced a ceasefire agreement. They have said, I'm quoting here, "The ceasefire agreement is the result of the legendary steadfastness of our great Palestinian people, and our valiant resistance in the Gaza Strip, over the course of more than 15 months. This agreement to halt the agression is an achievment for our people, our resistance, our nation, and the free people of the world. It comes as part of our responsibility towards our steadfast and patient people in the proud Gaza Strip." They also announced in a speech just within the past hour that In their assessment, the ceasefire represents the achievement of all of their demands since the beginning of the genocide, and they laid [00:03:00] out the framework of the ceasefire.

BRIAN BECKER - HOST, THE SOCIALIST PROGRAM: Okay.

LAYAN SIMA FULEIHAN: Now, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad had a very similar tone. They said, "Our people and their resistance are imposing an honorable agreement to stop the aggression, withdraw, and conduct an honorable prisoner exchange due to their legendary steadfastness and brave and valiant fighters." They also mourn the righteous martyrs, and they look forward to healing the wounds of the Palestinian people, and extend greetings to all of the steadfast fighters in the Gaza Strip.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine released a statement just before the official announcement of the ceasefire, where they condemned the ongoing assassinations and bombardments that Israel was still carrying out today.

BRIAN BECKER - HOST, THE SOCIALIST PROGRAM: They assassinated- the Israelis, using a drone, assassinated a Palestinian journalist as he was announcing a ceasefire.

LAYAN SIMA FULEIHAN: Just after. He was- those moments right before the ceasefire, you know, kept getting closer and closer. The whole world, people of Gaza were like, "It's going to be announced. It's going to be [00:04:00] announced," over the past couple of days. No one has slept for the past couple of days. And this young journalist was speaking live on his social media saying, "I'm so excited for the ceasefire to be announced." And then just after that, he was assassinated. Horrific.

BRIAN BECKER - HOST, THE SOCIALIST PROGRAM: By a drone. A drone strike.

LAYAN SIMA FULEIHAN: Yes. And over the past, I think, a couple of days, more than 86 Palestinians have been killed in bombardments. And it was going right up until the ceasefire was officially announced.

BRIAN BECKER - HOST, THE SOCIALIST PROGRAM: So the PFLP statement condemns that. And what, how do they characterize the ceasefire?

LAYAN SIMA FULEIHAN: They say that the- this is right before it was announced they said, "Amid this continued aggression," which is the ongoing bombardment, "the Palestinian resistance factions are intensifying their efforts to halt this aggression as soon as possible. War criminal Benjamin Netanyahu, mired in his failures and defeats, will ultimately find himself and his fascist government compelled to agree to a ceasefire after their catastrophic failure to achieve any of their objectives beyond [00:05:00] inflicting death and destruction on unarmed civilians."

The Ceasefire in Gaza w Mohammad Alsaafin - American Prestige - Air Date 1-19-25

DANIEL BESSNER - CO-HOST, AMERICAN PRESTIGE: And I just want to highlight two things before we move into the deal. It's this point of anti-democratic foreign policymaking, which I think is correct. I think it's anti democratic in two ways. On one hand, you have the Congresses you're talking about, which is basically shaped by lobbying. And has been shaped since the 1970s by a combination of AIPAC and basically Evangelical lobbying represented today, primarily by Kufi, even though it's something that goes back further and further.

So you have the classic foreign policy thing, where organized interests that have capital are able to sway an issue or areas that aren't primary for most Americans. Something that's been going on since the 19th century, if not earlier. And on the other hand, you have a clerisy of foreign policymaking, ensconced in two separate bodies. One, the literal official organizations of state like the National Security Council or the Department of Defense, none of those people are elected. Most of them are career appointments, particularly in the DOD and the NSC [00:06:00] bureaucracy. And they basically just do whatever they want with absolutely no democratic accountability.

And then on the other hand, you have the so called "Blob" which is sort of the techno-scientific institutions like think tanks, which themselves play an enormously influential role in foreign policy, that oftentimes receive government spending from both foreign governments and the US government. And I point everyone to the Quincy Institute's think tank report that just came out that actually traced foreign funding. And those people have absolutely no democratic accountability to anyone. And then you have a third group, which is the, basically the traditional military industrial complex. The variance defense groups that kind of just lobby in favor of, if not war, defense spending and armament spending.

So you have this entire complex of institutions that basically insulate foreign policy decision making and policy making from the public. And I just want to emphasize that it's an enormous problem when two thirds of Americans don't want something to happen. And it just happens with literally no fucking, [00:07:00] even consideration that it not. And I want to just underline that as a gigantic problem for the left.

Trump's Middle East Plans w Mouin Rabbani - Behind the News - Air Date 1-23-25

DOUG HENWOOD - HOST, BEHIND THE NEWS: Okay, let's start with this deal, whatever it is, the ceasefire deal, is nearly identical to the outlines of one proposed in May. What were the details of that proposal? And then what happened? Why did it become okay eight months later when it wasn't so good in May?

MOUIN RABBANI: The deal consists of three stages. And the first stage, essentially, consists of a temporary suspension of hostilities, together with a limited Israeli-Palestinian exchange of captives, and a surge in urgently needed humanitarian supplies into the Gaza Strip.

The second stage, which is not yet finalized, and the negotiations on which are supposed to begin on day 16 of the first stage, which is supposed to last for a total of 42 days, we'll see a larger Israeli [00:08:00] withdrawal from within the Gaza Strip, a reopening of the border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, a much broader exchange of captives, and of course, a continuation of the suspension of hostilities.

And if the third stage is then concluded and finalized, then we're really talking about an indefinite ceasefire and the completion of the exchange of captives, or rather at that stage, any remaining bodies held by the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip will be handed over to the Israelis in exchange, I presume for additional Palestinian prisoners and hostages and bodies held by Israel. And the reconstruction plan that is supposed to be implemented under the supervision of Egypt and Qatar, the two main mediators of this agreement, together with the United Nations.

Now as you mentioned, this multistage deal [00:09:00] is essentially identical to the one presented by former president Biden in late May of last year, which Biden said at the time was not so much an American proposal, but rather a proposal that had been formulated by the Israelis and presented by the Americans in Washington. And now the Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, has said that in fact, the deal is also very close to what had initially been proposed in December of 2023, shortly after the temporary ceasefire and a limited exchange of captives took place and then collapsed because Israel decided to resume the war.

What happened is that after Biden presented the Israeli agreement in late May, and then Hamas accepted it in early July of last year, something that Netanyahu [00:10:00] did not expect, he began adding new conditions. Such as that Israel would maintain an indefinite presence in what is called the Netzarim Corridor, which essentially bisects the Gaza Strip into north and south. That Israel would maintain a indefinite read permanent presence in what Israel calls the Philadelphi Corridor, which is the border zone between Gaza and Egypt, that Israel would retain freedom of action within the Gaza Strip.

Essentially, The deal that Netanyahu is proposing is that Israel will retrieve all its captives and hostages and then resume its genocidal campaign in the Gaza Strip. And under Biden, the Americans went along with this. They basically claimed, falsely as we now know, that the only reason the deal was not being consummated was because Hamas was refusing to accept it. Whereas we now know the real reason, and this has been made clear, not only by everyone who has looked [00:11:00] into this, but even by Netanyahu's own negotiators. The real reason was that Israel kept proposing new conditions and changes designed to make it impossible for Hamas to accept an amended deal. And Hamas essentially said that they're only going to accept the deal that had been proposed by Biden. They did show some flexibility in terms of the wording and the sequencing and so on, but there were no major changes.

So then you- as you rightly ask, well, what happened? Why is Israel suddenly accepting the agreement that it had rejected for the past half year? Well, the key issue is that the American attitude changed. The incoming Trump administration made clear to the Israelis that the incoming president did not want a foreign policy crisis on his hands on the day he entered office. And he absolutely did not want a crisis on his hands that also included American hostages [00:12:00] in the Middle East, because several of the Israelis being held in the Gaza Strip are also dual nationals. In other words, they're also US citizens.

And it was as a result of basically Israel being given its marching orders that Netanyahu came to the conclusion it was not a very good idea to get on Trump's bad side at the very outset of his tenure, and went along with this agreement. You know, Trump had said on several occasions after the election that if there is no deal, there will be hell to pay. And everyone interpreted this as a threat to Hamas, which I'm sure it was, but it wasn't a threat directed solely at Hamas. It was a threat directed at everyone involved: 'Finish the deal and make sure there's a ceasefire by January 20th.'

Israeli analysts have also pointed out that there are other factors that have now made it easier for Netanyahu to accept the deal. And they're [00:13:00] talking about one thing that we have now that we didn't have last summer is that Israel has successfully eliminated two leaders of Hamas. (Israel) has managed to decimate the leadership of of Hezbollah. It has bombed Iran and, of course, the Syrian regime of Bashar al Assad has collapsed and is no more.

That has led to improved poll numbers for Netanyahu, an expansion of his coalition, making it easier for him to accept the deal and lose a few of his coalition partners. But then there is also the explanation that was put forward by the Biden administration and particularly by former Secretary of State Antony Blinken. And can I just say what a relief it is to be able to say "former Secretary of State Antony Blinken." He said that it was the pressure Hamas felt, because of all these Israeli military achievements that I just mentioned that finally compelled a weakened and isolated [00:14:00] Hamas to accept what it had been rejecting throughout the second half of 2024. That's a bald-faced lie, to put it politely. Because first of all, Hamas had already accepted this agreement in early July, 2024. And secondly, and more importantly, all these developments that were enumerated, the assassinations of the Hamas leaders, regime change in Syria, the decimation of the Hezbollah leadership, and so on, took place after Hamas had already accepted the proposal. So they were completely irrelevant to its calculations at the time that it made its decision to play ball.

On the Situation in Syria and its Implications for the Region - Revolutionary Left Radio - Air Date 1-6-25

BREHT O'SHEA - HOST, REVOLUTIONARY LEFT RADIO: So most listeners will have been aware that the Assad government has collapsed, but who are the forces and individuals that are attempting to replace him? And what is the current state of Syria overall in the wake of recent events?

ANGIE: So I can speak to this a bit. Apologies in advance. My cat tends to be a little bit active in the [00:15:00] background. In terms of actors, I would say we can go ahead and say everyone is a free Syrian today. I would argue primarily the actors that we have to focus on are Khayat al Tahrir al Sham, the HTS, led by Mohammed al Zawlani.

There's still confrontation with other forces, from the SDF to other Turkish groups, that are continuing to, we can say, resist or experience skirmishes in different areas of the region, that are just still trying to establish what law is under what area, and what individuals are essentially permitted to remain in their homes.

There's still certain local militias within the Valley of the Christians that have not completely disbanded, despite orders for disarmament, but the actors that we have to focus on in Syria are Hayat Tahrir al Sham and everybody in the West. So I would argue this includes Turkey, this includes Israel, this includes actors like [00:16:00] Iran and Russia, this includes France, this includes Germany, this obviously includes the United States.

But the actors that we need to look at in particular are puppet masters in Syria right now. And so what we're looking at in terms of the actual event is a performance at the moment.

BREHT O'SHEA - HOST, REVOLUTIONARY LEFT RADIO: Yeah, and would anybody like to follow up on that? And maybe even just tell us a little bit more about exactly what happened, because I'm sure there are perhaps even some people in our audience that are totally unaware of exactly what even has occurred, so maybe setting that up could be helpful.

In terms of what happened, that's still being parsed out. The fact that the Syrian army just laid down its arms with no fight, that it kept receiving orders to retreat, And that Assad very abruptly left, is still something that everybody, every actor in the region is trying to piece together. What we know for sure is that Assad was declared the victor of the Syrian civil war for the [00:17:00] sheer reason that it was launched to oust him and he remained in power. However, that victory that he had was an incredibly fragile one.

He presided over a country that had been radically, dramatically de-developed by bombing, by foreign intervention, by the US administered occupation of a third of the country, which happens to be the most lucrative region in terms of its wheat and oil supplies. So, he presided over a very fragile Syria, whose economy had been devastated by, again, many of its major cities being decimated. By its breadbasket and its oil fields being largely occupied by the US proxies in the region as well as the US military itself. So that it collapsed so quickly is what [00:18:00] I think surprised everybody. Because I sometimes I often think of how when the Berlin Wall fell not even the CIA was prepared for it. You know, so this resulted in such a stunning collapse as something that is probably going to be studied for the immediate future and probably well past that, but again, anybody who wants to-

MOHAMMAD: I just have a quick thing to add in addition to what Ed already stated, which is that all of this has to be taken within the context of the sanctions that have been placed on Syria as well, which these sanctions, again, have had a severe impact on the Syrian population and then perceptions of Assad as well. And on the region all together. So all of this is also not without taking into consideration the interventionist policies of the United States and other imperial forces.

BREHT O'SHEA - HOST, REVOLUTIONARY LEFT RADIO: Absolutely. And we'll definitely get back to that and talk about that in more detail. But Angie, go ahead.

ANGIE: Yeah, I don't want to go too far into the sanctions at the [00:19:00] moment, since I'm sure we'll circle back. But I think from that point that Mohammed makes, it's important to also recognize that the interventionism in Syria cannot, at any point, be separated from Syria's stance and position towards Israel and Palestine.

Prior to the fall of the Assad regime, if that's what we want to kind of conceptualize it as, Turkey and Syria spent the summer and the fall and the beginning of winter essentially negotiating a reopening of their state's relationships. So Erdogan has been pursuing Assad for nearly six months at the point at which Turkey opens the borders for Hayyat al Tahrir al Sham to enter Syria.

And that order comes, critically, in the moment that Netanyahu is announcing the weak ceasefire on south of Lebanon and then also warning Assad to not play with fire. And I think it's really important to kind of reintegrate that tie that Netanyahu speaks and Erdogan [00:20:00] moves when it comes to Syria.

Katherine Gallagher on Abu Ghraib Verdict - CounterSpin - Air Date 11-29-24

JJ: Well, the case is landmark, in part just because of the way that it names contractors as responsible parties. It’s always been their argument, right, that they’re just private actors following orders from the US, and the US has immunity, so we do too, right? That’s part of what’s important about this.

KATHERINE GALLAGHER: That’s precisely right. Over the 16 years of litigation, CACI has filed at least 15 motions to dismiss. And whether they’ve invoked Derivative Sovereign Immunity or the Political Question Doctrine or the Government Contractor Defense or the Law of War Immunity, or most recently and throughout trial, the so-called Borrowed Servant Defense—all of these boiled down to essentially one argument, which is, we were working with the US military, [00:21:00] and anything we did was because they were overseeing it. And if they were overseeing it, they should have any responsibility, not us. We were just, essentially, following orders.

Democracy Now!: Ex-Abu Ghraib Interrogator: Israelis Trained U.S. to Use “Palestinian Chair” Torture Device

Now, the conduct at issue in this case—and we have clear decisions from the Fourth Circuit saying as much in our long litigation—the conduct at issue is unlawful. We’re talking about torture. We had plead war crimes, we’re talking about cruel and inhuman and degrading treatment. These are violations of US domestic criminal law, and they are also violations of US-signed treaties, including the Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions.

And so, this is not conduct that the military could order anyone, whether it’s soldiers or contractors, to do. This is unlawful, illegal. [00:22:00] So CACI’s defense fails, insofar as this is not a lawful order that they could have ever received from the military.

But, additionally, CACI was hired to supervise its own employees. This is a for-profit corporation that hired employees at will. So, unlike an enlisted person at Abu Ghraib, the CACI employees could quit at any time, and notably, some did, and one even did, more than one, because of what they saw happening at Abu Ghraib. So this corporation should be held accountable for its own employees’ conduct.

And that’s precisely, after 16-and-a-half years, what a jury in Alexandria, Virginia, found to be the case two weeks ago when they gave down a verdict against CACI and for our plaintiffs.

JANINE JACKSON - HOST, COUNTERSPIN: [00:23:00] I will say I’m disheartened by the relative quietness of media around the verdict. There has been some coverage, but I feel like I can say pretty confidently that had this case died in court, we would’ve never heard about it again.

But I’m also saddened by the accounts that I have seen: Virtually all of them use the phrase “over two decades ago.” And that, to me, is not a neutral tag. It’s a linguistic wink that says, “Why are we still talking about this?” But as you’ve noted, the case has taken this long because CACI has resisted it for this long, right?

KATHERINE GALLAGHER: That is absolutely the case. The plaintiffs filed back in 2008, and our plaintiffs, to this day, the 20-year time period doesn’t erase or make this historic. They are living every day with being an Abu Ghraib torture [00:24:00] survivor. They still suffer from nightmares, from flashbacks, and talking about Abu Ghraib is not something that’s easy for them to do.

The fact that this case went to trial not once but twice, and that the plaintiffs had to tell their account, tell about their suffering, their humiliation, more than once, it wasn’t easy. And to remember the kinds of details, some of it is seared in their memory, and others, of course, over 20 years is less clear than it used to be. But the nightmares and the mental harm has continued to this day, and it should not be something that is relegated to the history books at all.

And one of the things I’d note: There weren’t many photos shown during trial, but there were a few photos shown during trial, [00:25:00] and there were a couple of jurors who appeared to be on the younger side. And when those photos came up, particularly for one of the younger jurors, who may not have seen this on the cover of the paper each day, as those of us did back in 2004, there was absolute shock. There was absolute shock. I mean, these photos were shocking for everyone, but the accounts seemed to be unknown. And that is not something that should be permitted to happen.

And that’s part of why, despite the difficulty, our plaintiffs have brought this case forward, and stayed with it throughout all of this time, so that it is not forgotten. And it is so that what was done in our name, for me as a US citizen, is also not forgotten. And they want to be sure that this never happens to anyone else again. So to the extent that corrections [00:26:00] haven’t been made, whether by the US military or by CACI, to ensure that their employees or soldiers do not ever, ever treat detainees, or humans, in the way that the Iraqi men, women and children who were held at Abu Ghraib were treated, that’s what this case is also about.

Trump's Middle East Plans w Mouin Rabbani Part 2 - Behind the News - Air Date 1-23-25

DOUG HENWOOD - HOST, BEHIND THE NEWS: I'm speaking with the journalist and political analyst Mouin Rabbani. Some people have expressed skepticism about the story that Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, laid down the line with Netanyahu and Netanyahu fell into line, saying this is just PR, to buy some time, to have a smooth inauguration.

First of all, do you think this story is believable and longer term, what next? Trump is talking about Gaza's potential as a seaside resort. Jared Kushner said something similar last year. What do they have in mind? Do you have any sense of that?

MOUIN RABBANI: I don't know if they have anything in mind. Let me just answer the first part of your question first, is that we've had multiple [00:27:00] reports from multiple sources providing details of the Trump transition team's interactions with the Israelis, and specifically about his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff's, meetings with Netanyahu. These seem entirely credible. The general tenor that the Trump administration read the riot act to Netanyahu and told him to get into line to me seems entirely believable.

There isn't a better explanation of why Netanyahu had been rejecting this agreement throughout the past six months, had never come under any pressure from the Biden administration to sign onto it, and all of a sudden, as soon as Trump's people got involved...

The second, and I think more important part of your question, what do the Americans have in mind? Here it's much less clear because we do know [00:28:00] that Trump's people absolutely did not want a crisis on January 20th. Is that all they cared about? Are they now going to lose interest, given that Gaza and the Middle East did not interfere with the inauguration? If they now lose interest, does this mean that Netanyahu can now derail the agreement after its first stage to ensure that the second and third stages of this agreement are not implemented? Or will they remain on top of things and keep the pressure on to ensure that the rest of this agreement is implemented? And there are conflicting signs here.

On the one hand we have Witkoff not only saying that he intends to remain personally engaged, but there's even suggestions that he will soon be visiting the Gaza Strip. And in a quote, attributed to him to ensure that there are no provocations to derail the agreement. And he then made a point [00:29:00] of saying, and I'm not only talking about Hamas. So those are words [we] would never have heard from any of Biden's people.

And then there's the larger context. Yes, they've talked about the Gaza beach front as if this is essentially a real estate deal and not a political crisis or a decades long issue of occupation and self determination and so on. But I think the other issue here is that while we're very much focused on US-Israeli relations, we would do well to pay equal attention to US-Saudi relations. And why am I saying this? You may recall that during his first term, Trump, through Prince Jared of Kushner, engineered a normalization agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, then Bahrain, then Morocco. And the big prize was seen as Saudi-Israeli [00:30:00] normalization. That didn't occur. Biden made it the centerpiece of his Middle East policy, at least until October 2023, and even after that, and also didn't achieve it.

Will Trump now return to this item? Will he make this the centerpiece of his Middle East diplomacy? The reason is to believe that he will. We then have to see how the Saudis respond. Will the Saudis simply go along with it without seeking to impose any conditions regarding the Palestinians simply to curry favor with the Americans the way that the Emiratis and the Bahrainis did? Will they assess that this is simply not going to happen because the Israelis are too extreme and won't be willing and won't be pressured by the Americans to make any significant political moves? And will the Saudis therefore focus much more on concluding a bilateral agreement Saudi-American agreement? Or will the [00:31:00] Saudis go to Trump and say, We want to do this. This is what needs to happen. An end to occupation. Whatever other political arrangements that would fundamentally transform Israeli Palestinian relations. You, Trump, get not only to sell many billions more of weapons, and we keep the Chinese role in Saudi Arabia limited, and we limit our relations with Russia. And as a bonus, you get a Nobel Peace Prize.

If the Saudis do that, Trump may very well go for it. That will, of course, I think, create very significant tensions in Washington between the various elements of his own constituency, where you have a collection of neocons, Israel firsters, Christian evangelists, isolationists, people who feel that the U. S. is being led by the nose by Israel and so on.

So these are things I think that have yet to materialize and we'll know much more in the next few months. [00:32:00] Does Trump have a clear agenda for the Middle East? If he does, who is going to be formulating that agenda? Or were they simply focused on the transition and don't really care what happens next?

And then of course, there's also the broader question of Iran where conditions now are very different than they were during the first Trump administration.

Egypt, Jordan Reject Trump Plan to Clean Out Gaza; Palestinians Return to N. Gaza in Historic Day - Democracy Now! - Air Date 1-27-25

AMY GOODMAN: So, these comments of Trump, the last ones echo his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who had said in the last year that Gaza is great beachfront property, talking about it as a kind of real estate deal. Trump, most recently, on Air Force One on Saturday night saying that more than a million Palestinians should be moved to Egypt and Jordan, that he spoke to the Jordanian king. Meanwhile, Jordan and Egypt — talk about their responses and, most importantly, the response of Palestinians.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, both Jordan and Egypt have rejected this, and they’ve done so since the beginning of this genocidal assault. You know, these comments were welcomed by the far-right [00:33:00] ministers Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, who said, you know, this would be the voluntary emigration that they’ve been dreaming about for Palestinians to be forcibly displaced outside of Gaza and for them to rebuild Jewish settlements in Gaza.

I think what’s — yes, we have to acknowledge what’s happening today, which are these incredible scenes of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Palestinians, who have withstood an unprecedented genocidal assault, returning back to the north. Now, we spoke at Drop Site to Mustafa Barghouti just a few days ago, and he said the return of forcibly displaced Palestinians to the north will be the ultimate defeat of Israeli plans, because it means that the goal of ethnic cleansing did not materialize.

Let’s remember what happened. If we go back to October 7th, 2023, when Benjamin Netanyahu took to the airwaves and declared war on Gaza, he said, “Leave now,” to the, you know, 2.3 million Palestinians who are living in [00:34:00] Gaza. Just a few days later, we saw this shocking directive for all 1.1 million Palestinians who are north of Wadi Gaza to flee to the south. And we saw this unbelievable, unprecedented aerial bombing campaign and many people forcibly displaced to the south, many of them to Rafah in the beginning. And let’s not forget that at the time, Western governments, including the United States government under the Biden administration, were trying to persuade Egypt to take in hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, displace them in northern Sinai, offering economic incentives. There’s reporting that shows that this was taking place. Egypt rejected it at the time, but, more importantly, Palestinians rejected this.

And then we saw them build what’s called the Netzarim Corridor, which bisected Gaza. This was a six- or seven-kilometer-wide strip of land. They completely depopulated, forcibly displaced, ethnically cleansed that area, destroyed almost all of the buildings there, set up military bases. [00:35:00] And this was, essentially — reporting shows in Haaretz this was called a “kill zone.” Any man, woman or child, unarmed, would enter — it’s unclear where the border was of the Netzarim Corridor — they would be shot and killed. And this was essentially the place that divided Gaza. Once you crossed there, you could not go back. We saw in October also a concentrated extermination campaign in the very north of Gaza, in Jabaliya, Jabaliya refugee camp, in Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia, where they completely did not allow any aid in and then very systematically started attacking these towns and cities and forcing people out on, essentially, what were death marches to the south, across the Netzarim Corridor, and back.

And, you know, despite all of this, people withstood. They remained on their land. And now we’re seeing these incredible scenes of people returning home. And to think that, you know, Trump can just say they should [00:36:00] move to Egypt or Jordan, I think, you know, is preposterous. And we’re seeing right now that this is kind of an ultimate defeat of the plans of ethnic cleansing, that have dated back to the 1950s for Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: So, I wanted to go to that quote of Jared Kushner, made months ago — that’s Trump’s son-in-law and former adviser — weighing in on Israel’s war on Gaza, saying Israel should move Palestinians out of the besieged territory, which he said contains very valuable waterfront property, making the remarks during an event hosted by the Middle East Initiative at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

JARED KUSHNER: And Gaza’s waterfront property, it could be very valuable to — if people would focus on kind of building up, you know, livelihoods. You think about all the money that’s gone into this tunnel network and into all the munitions, if that would have gone into education or innovation, what could have been done. And so, I think that it’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but I think, from Israel’s perspective, I would do my best to move the people out and [00:37:00] then clean it up. But I don’t think that Israel has stated that they don’t want the people to move back there afterwards.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s a pretty amazing comment, invaluable beachfront property. Earlier today, I was watching the Palestinian attorney Diana Buttu on Al Jazeera. When asked about what Trump said, you know, I think all agree it does look like a demolition zone. There’s no question about it. How can Palestinians live there? And she said, “OK, if there’s that question, rather than moving them to neighboring Arab states like Egypt and Jordan, what about moving them home?” She said 80% of the people of Gaza come from places in Israel.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Yeah, I mean, this is why Gaza has long been a site of resistance in historic Palestine and long been a place that Israel wants to ethnically cleanse, because it is the largest concentration of Palestinian refugees in [00:38:00] historic Palestine. So, it has always been a restive place. These people, who 80% of them are their descendants, want to return to their homes, which are mostly the towns and villages around Gaza. And like you said, this is now — they are returning, in these really incredible scenes that we’re seeing right now —

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, this is a flood of humanity.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: People hugging, who haven’t seen — they’ve been separated from their family members, from mothers and fathers, separated from their children, for 15 months, and they’re reuniting for the first time. They never thought they would see each other again.

But they are returning to, as you said, a devastated landscape. Nearly the entire — every house has been destroyed or badly damaged. The government authorities are telling people to bring their tents with them. There are not even enough tents for people to set up on the rubble of their homes. And as we’ve been seeing in other parts, as well, while Israel has violated the ceasefire nearly every single day, killing Palestinians, especially in [00:39:00] Rafah, the death count, the official death count, has been also shooting up since the 19th, when the ceasefire went into effect, because dozens of bodies are being recovered from under the rubble. And so, you know, I’m afraid we’re going to see a lot of this as people search for their loved ones as they’re returning to this devastated landscape. But they are determined not to leave their land, and many of them will set up tents on the rubble of their homes.

AMY GOODMAN: And then we go to the West Bank and what’s happening there. We just spoke to Mariam Barghouti. You wrote a piece with her for Drop Site. If you can talk about intensification of violence against Palestinians there?

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, essentially, what we saw soon after the ceasefire went into effect, a war on the West Bank, initially dubbed the Iron Wall. All of these things had been taking place already — attacks on Jenin, closures of checkpoints and so forth — but a massive escalation of this, to the likes of which we haven’t seen since 2002, [00:40:00] an invasion of Jenin. Right now they are demolishing the refugee camp, not just with bulldozers as we’ve seen in the past. They are actually detonating, the way they have done in Gaza, parts of this. Two thousand families have already been displaced. Across the West Bank, there was usually around 700 military checkpoints. Now there’s close to a thousand. They’ve all closed down. Cities have been closed off from each other. People can’t leave their towns and villages to go to school, to go to work. They’re separated from each other. And so, this is — they’re laying siege to the West Bank. And a lot of what we show in the reporting and what has been said was that this was a trade-off that Netanyahu — trying to convince his ministers, like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, to sign onto the Gaza ceasefire plan, that they would launch this kind of unprecedented military assault on the West Bank

Gaza Ceasefire Explained Reading Between The Lines Part 2 - The Socialist Program - Air Date 1-16-25

BRIAN BECKER - HOST, THE SOCIALIST PROGRAM: I just want to, as we get towards the finish line, I want to just recontextualize what's going on. The war against the Palestinian people is [00:41:00] not new. The Nakba, May 1948, the terrible ethnic cleansing, hundreds of thousands of people driven from their homes, the use of massacres by Zionist violent gangs in 1948. We know about that. And then it continued. The seizure, or attempted- the invasion of Egypt and the seizure of other Arab lands by the Israelis with the support of Britain and France at that time in 1956.

In 1967 was a turning point. It was a six day war against Egypt, Syria, and the others, as we talked about. Six days. In six days, Gaza was seized. In six days, the West Bank was seized. In six days, the Golan Heights were seized, and now they've been annexed from Syria. In six days, the Sinai was seized from, you know, and Egypt had a massive army.

In six days, the Israelis did this. After 465 [00:42:00] days, not in Egypt, not in these other places, but against this little strip of land, against the people concentrated in this little strip of land called Gaza. After 465 days, there is a negotiated end to the war. It's not an- if this was a complete victory for Israel as the US is going to try to present it, there would not have been a negotiated end. There would- complete victories include unconditional surrender imposed on the defeated party. But instead, the Israelis have come back to the negotiating table, and they've actually changed the position from May 2024 in a way that the deal is actually better for the Palestinian side.

That doesn't mean, this is- I don't want to use language, sort of either hyperbolically or in a Pollyannish way, like something wonderful has happened. The terrible genocide that we [00:43:00] witnessed is something that the Palestinian people, their families, their villages, their communities, their towns, their cities, I mean, whole generations will be scarred by this.

But what's obviously, and I want to end on this, is that even the American government is now recognizing that not only were the resistance forces in Palestine not fully defeated, but all of those who have been killed, the ranks of those who have been killed, are being filled up by the next generation. If you see your mother, your brother, your father, your cousin massacred, and you're eight years old or 10 years old or 14 years old, you're not going to think at the end of the day with a ceasefire, 'Oh, great.' You're going to think like, 'I'm going to keep fighting for my people.' Because this steadfastness, this resilience is actually part of the psychology of the entire people. And that's what makes the Palestinian struggle sort of the detonator [00:44:00] for a global struggle for all of those people who feel oppressed, who are oppressed, who are exploited.

In that sense, this is a battle, not the last battle, but a battle, terrible battle, but a battle that leads to other struggles for freedom and liberation and emancipation. And I think that people in the United States have a duty, an obligation, and a challenge to play their role in helping the Palestinian people win that kind of freedom, because it's the government that speaks in our name. Not necessarily with our consent, but certainly in our name that does all of this with Israel again, facilitating genocide and oppression.

So you get the last word.

LAYAN SIMA FULEIHAN: Well, Brian, This is an important note to end on. I think that we have to be very clear about what's going on and be very clear that when the United States comes out and says that Hamas has been defeated, Hamas has been weakened, you were referring to Blinken's [00:45:00] comments at the Atlantic Council. Again, he said that Hamas can never be military, militarily defeated because the ranks have filled again. The same number of people that have been killed have been recruited over the past 15 months. He was admitting in many ways, defeat.

It's an irony of history that the greatest imperialist powers throughout history can't seem to learn from the mistakes of their own past or from the past of other empires. Because when you try to oppress a people or a nation it creates the conditions for people to pick up the resistance banner. It inspires more people to fight. If- there's no situation in which the United States and Israel could exterminate the spirit of resistance by killing people. Over the past 15 months, they have effectively killed untold numbers and maimed and wounded many more. But they have actually worked against themselves in terms [00:46:00] of growing the resistance spirit inside and outside of Gaza.

They've created a situation in which they themselves have exposed their own true agenda, and now their own population, the United States population, is completely with the Palestinian people. A year ago, if you asked someone on the street, "What do you think of Palestine?" They may say, "I don't know," or "It's a, it's a long complicated conflict," or, "Oh, the Arabs and the Jews have been fighting for thousands of years."

Now, when you go on the street, the majority of people will tell you "End the genocide." Wearing a keffiyeh is now, it's not a style. It's a political statement that a large number of people have taken up. It's incredible to see the shift among the American population. And the contradictions inside the United States, a growing anti-imperialist sentiment inside the United States, is going to change the correlation of forces, the terrain in which the United States can actually operate its imperialist agenda.

Trump is coming into office in a [00:47:00] very contested moment. And the movement over the past 15 months has played its role in, really at its heart, communicating what's actually going on in the ground, what the role of the United States is, and what the role of the people of the United States actually is. And that we are the ones who speak for ourselves, not the White House.

When Trump comes into office, he's going to bring with him, a lot of confusion because of the different things his friends in his cabinet are going to be saying. Also, his statements. He says he's anti-war. He says he's for the working class. He says all sorts of different things. He says he's for the everyday man.

Our task as the movement is to continue giving that clarity. We're going to have to keep analyzing from the point of view of what is actually happening for the Palestinian people. What is the advancement of the Palestinian cause? What is the advancement of the cause of all oppressed people across the world, including inside the United States, in which we're all up against the [00:48:00] same enemy, the same system, the same billionaire, imperialist, capitalist system, that is exploiting and killing and massacring people across the world. So I think this is a moment for us to be, to really reach out to all of those in our lives. If you're organizers, if you're an activist, to your family, to your friends, to really start explaining to people what's happening.

The ceasefire is one step forward. And now there's many more steps forward to go. After the prisoner exchange, there will be many more Palestinian prisoners that need to be released. There will be a siege that needs to be lifted. There will be the full struggle for Palestinian liberation, the end of the occupation, the end of apartheid. These are all things we're still going to fight for in the Palestinian movement and unite with other sectors of struggle, other fronts of struggle that have shared interests that also see in the liberation of Palestine, their own liberation. I think that this is our path forward and it's- you know, the ceasefire is an incredible moment, an [00:49:00] incredible achievement.

It's an achievement for the Palestinian people, but it's not the end of the struggle. There's much more to fight for. There's a lot of losses to take stock of, and there's a lot of solidarity still that needs to be built.

Note from the Editor on the echos of atrocities

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips starting with The Socialist Program highlighting reactions to the ceasefire from Palestinian groups. American Prestige highlighted the disconnect between public opinion and America's actions abroad, particularly in the Middle East. Behind the News broke down the ceasefire deal in detail. Revolutionary Left Radio examined Syria in the wake of the fall of Assad. CounterSpin explained the landmark case holding a private contractor responsible for torture in Abu Ghraib prison. Behind the News discussed the role of Trump's administration and the politics of the ceasefire. Democracy Now! looked at the plight of Palestinians attempting to return home at the same time as Trump is making comments in support of a purge of the Gaza Strip. And finally, The Socialist Program attempted to recontextualize the ongoing [00:50:00] struggle of Palestinians and the way violence and self-defense are popularly defined in media and culture.

And those were just the Top Takes. There's a lot more in the Deeper Dive sections.

But first, a reminder that this show is produced with the support of our members, who get access to bonus episodes and enjoy all of our shows without ads. To support all of our work and have those bonus episodes delivered seamlessly to the new, members-only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show at BestOfTheLeft.com/support (there's a link in the show notes), through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple Podcast app. And as always, if regular membership isn't in the cards for you, shoot me an email requesting a financial hardship membership, because we don't let a lack of funds stand in the way of hearing more information.

And we're also trying something new recently, offering you the opportunity to make your comments or questions on upcoming topics, since it takes a bit of time to do all of the research, I can let you know what we're going to be working on and you can potentially join the conversation as it happens. So [00:51:00] next up in future episodes, we're going to be zooming way out to the changing international dynamics under a Trump presidency, followed by an analysis of how the media is shifting and mostly capitulating to Trump.

To get your comments and questions in now for those topics, you can leave a voicemail or send us a text at 202-999-3991. We're also now findable on the privacy-focused messaging app Signal with the handle "BestoftheLeft.01". There's also a link in the show notes for that. Or you can simply email me to [email protected].

Now as for today's topic, I couldn't help but zoom way out on the nature of atrocities while thinking about today's show.

Today we're covering stories that go back 20 years. but there are echoes that go much further. Thinking about the Abu Ghraib prison, one of the major stories about Americans torturing Iraqi prisoners after we liberated the country from Saddam Hussein, was that Abu [00:52:00] Ghraib was one of the prisons Saddam had used to do his own torturing.

So it's a "under new management, same great experience you've come to expect" sort of scenario.

And it's not meant to be an exact parallel. Saddam torturing political prisoners to maintain authoritarian rule is not the same as our years-long anti-Muslim propaganda campaign, part of Bush's war on terror, and the systematic dehumanization of the so-called " Enemy" that always happens in wartime, leading to American prison guards feeling like they could do pretty much any dehumanizing thing they wanted to to their prisoners.

But at some point, those differences and our intentions just don't matter that much. I'm not saying they're irrelevant, but I'm saying that they only take you so far.

Now, a couple of years ago, Amanda and I visited a concentration camp just outside of Berlin, and were surprised to learn that after the Nazis had been defeated by the Allied forces, most prominently by the Soviets, who took Berlin [00:53:00] itself, that the Soviets took over management of that concentration camp and promptly used it to torture dissidents of their regime.

So they helped defeat the evil of the Nazis and promptly took their place. And maybe they weren't exactly the same as the Nazis or held the same intentions, but they sure as hell weren't different enough, and they are rightly condemned for that.

So, you think about all the terrible mistakes that the US made in the post 911 era. Not just the bad decisions to go to war in the first place, but all of the smaller terrible decisions all the way down the line, resulting in the completely predictable betrayal of the values we claim to have about due process and human rights.

And to me, it seemed both shocking but also completely predictable, that Israel would have taken the events of October 7th as the opportunity to model their response on our reaction to 9/11. Explicitly, [00:54:00] loudly, their representatives went on US television to proclaim their intention to fuck up just as badly as we had, violate human rights and rules of war at least as badly as we had, if not worse.

Because some people want so badly for the world to be black and white with a simple "us versus them" narrative and "the enemy" who we don't have to think of as human, and they'll use the actions of others to justify enacting their own darkest desires.

I have no doubt that the Soviets understood the depravity of the Nazis, and took it as license to be nearly as bad while still feeling that they had the moral high ground, just as Israel looked to the US and said, "Well, If you can do it...."

Now, I talked to Amanda about all this, and she brought up the idea, believed by many, that the US are always the Good Guys. [00:55:00] Meaning, we're either doing the right thing, or we're doing the wrong thing, but with the best of intentions, so we can always be forgiven our sins. That's how the idea goes. In large part, this stems from the Second World War. We were on the right side of history on that one, and our self-perception as the perpetual Good Guys have been projected around the world in an endless echo chamber ever since.

Finally, though, after countless ill-conceived wars, acts of imperialism, violations of human rights, supported coups, propped up dictators, and now finally giving full support to an ongoing genocide in Gaza, the idea of good intentions or us being the Good Guys is wearing ridiculously thin.

There are some, particularly on the extreme left, who have seen through the veil of American Good Guyism, just as I have, but have come to the conclusion that our intentions have [00:56:00] actually always been bad.

Then, of course, there are still plenty who hang on to the notion that our intentions are good.

For me, I bristle at either perspective for two reasons. It's always more complicated than that, and there are always a mix of intentions at play when something as big and complicated as a country takes an action, for good or ill, on the international stage.

But also, it just doesn't particularly matter. Fighting over intentions ends up being a distraction from the actions themselves. And digging in on one side or the other ends up being a sort of dogma that obscures reality regardless of which side you're coming from.

So for me, I don't care to pay too much attention to the idea of intentions. Again, not that intentions matter not at all, but we tend to give them far more weight than they deserve. Actual outcomes matter more, and have a far greater impact on a country's credibility in the world.

Lastly, I wanted to tell you [00:57:00] about two signs I saw at that Berlin concentration camp that seem relevant to today. The first was just across the street from the concentration camp explaining why they'd decided to build a police academy adjacent to the camp. It says in big bold letters at the top, "Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority. Article 1, Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany." Then it goes on to explain that, quote, "The Brandenburg University of Applied Police Sciences has been located here on the grounds of the former SS camp, to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp Memorial since 2006. The prime educational objective is commitment to the primary principle of the basic law: human dignity is inviolable. As part of their studies, students learn about the history of what happened here and the crimes committed by the police under the [00:58:00] Nazi regime." End quote.

And that is a good and honorable sentiment that is hopefully having the intended impact on German police cadets. I have no information beyond that to judge how well that's going.

In contrast, though, I'm reminded of the recent headlines about Trump's plan to expand our own lawless enclave in Guantanamo Bay to become a concentration camp intended to house tens of thousands of immigrants.

The second sign from the concentration camp that seems relevant today was a plaque in the museum explaining an historical leaflet. It says that the leaflet was from the National Storm Group and was making threats against the judges regarding a particular trial, and then goes on to explain the case in question. Quote, "In August 1932, S. A. Men beat a communist worker to death in front of his family. The assailants were sentenced to death shortly [00:59:00] afterward, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by the Reichskanzler von Papen. After the Nazis took over power, the murderers were released in March 1933, Just seven months after the murder."

If it's not already abundantly clear, the pardon of the violent January 6th insurrectionists and the DOJ taking down the Capital Violence Most Wanted site seeking information on fugitives and unidentified rioters are just the latest echo of this type of injustice and atrocity. The parallels. are not subtle.

Now, there's the old saying that most of us will have heard our whole lives, some version of the idea that we must remember the past or be doomed to repeat it. What is becoming more and more clear is that there are those who look to the past, particularly the most horrific, widely condemned episodes of the past, and don't fear them, but actively [01:00:00] seek to repeat them.

SECTION A: THE DEAL

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now, we'll continue to dive deeper on four topics. Next up, Section A- The Deal, followed by Section B- Ceasefire Politics, Section C- The Empire, and Section D- Now What?

The Ceasefire in Gaza w Mohammad Alsaafin Part 2 - American Prestige - Air Date 1-19-25

DEREK DAVISON - CO-HOST, AMERICAN PRESTIGE: I do. I want to, I'm a little chagrined to actually stay this long to get to this point, but, um, what has been the reaction that you've seen in Gaza?

I know there've been, I've seen reports of people obviously elated in the streets, but, um, you know, I, I, I imagine you've seen, uh, more video and, um, you know, kind of direct, uh, information about, uh, how this is being received in Gaza than, than I've seen so far. So, so tell us about that. Yeah, I mean,

MOHAMMAD ALSAAFIN: um, the scenes were of jubilation.

I think people are extremely happy. Um, and this is, I think it's not the happiness of It's the happiness of survival. I mean, these people have been through absolute hell. Uh, I think the worst [01:01:00] that, uh, modern warfare can unleash upon a population. They've had to go through, they've been through famine and starvation, forced famine and starvation.

They've been through displacement. They've, they've been through, I mean, you imagine the psychology of a population that has been made to understand that nothing is safe around them, not their children, their children are not off limits, the Israeli snipers, their hospitals are not off limits. Their schools are not off limits, even the tents that people set up are not off limits to Israeli drugs.

DANIEL BESSNER - CO-HOST, AMERICAN PRESTIGE: Waziristan with regards to drones and it's basically psychologically damaging forever. Children are afraid to leave their homes, blue skies induce terror. It's one of the worst things that you could possibly do to a population. It's beyond horrible.

MOHAMMAD ALSAAFIN: I don't know if you guys have noticed the buzzing sound in the background of every video that's come out of Gaza.

Yeah. Which is like the constant 24 hour drones surveillance over Gaza. That sound has been there. Last time I entered Gaza, it was in 2005, 20 years ago. And that [01:02:00] sound was there back then. Right? So you have, it's not just since the war, you have an entire generation of people who've grown up hearing that buzzing sound.

which is, which tells them you're being watched every step of the way. Um, so yes, it's, it's, it's the happiness. And I just want to like

DANIEL BESSNER - CO-HOST, AMERICAN PRESTIGE: underline like Americans freak out when they're pulled over by a cop for a traffic violation. Like the, the, the, the scale is literally unimaginable to someone here. And I just think people need to think about that for a second.

It's beyond horrible.

MOHAMMAD ALSAAFIN: It's, it's literally indescribable, Danny. I think unless you actually live there or, or witness it or live there, like even visit and see what it's, what that experience is, there's so much that you can't actually talk about, uh, because the words, the, the, the words don't match the experience and people will have no, I, no way of connecting with what that means.

Um, we, we surveilled by a drone that is armed and can kill you at any time. Uh, but that is the reality that [01:03:00] people have been living in. Um, At the same time, it's worth pointing out a couple of things. Um, 80 people were killed in Gaza today. Um, at least 30 since the since the ceasefire was announced. Um, Israeli airstrikes.

All reports I'm seeing is that the Israelis have intensified their bombing overnight. Um, and so I think people are gonna be counting down The minutes to Sunday, because every minute could literally, uh, result in someone being killed in Gaza. Um, I saw a tweet from a lady who said that the first thing she's going to do when the ceasefire takes effect is she's going to go try and dig out her son's bodies from under the rubble of their home.

Um, I think people need to realize that there are thousands. We talk about the death toll and I think it's, it's even the New York times talking yesterday about how it's actually all. It's actually a vast undercount. The 45, 000 people that are officially being counted. Um, [01:04:00] there are thousands of people who are missing.

Um, we don't know if they are being held by the Israelis. We don't know if they've been shot dead in the next three and corridor, for example, or just zero is actually obtained footage and broadcast footage over the last year, um, showing Israeli soldiers. killing Palestinians near the beach and then bulldozing their bodies into the sand.

So no one knows who those people were, no one knows where they're buried, no one knows what happened to them. Um, there are also thousands of people under the rubble of the buildings that have been bombed, uh, with these massive U. S. weapons, uh, U. S. missiles. Um, part of the reason that they're still there is because, uh, Israel has banned, amongst the things Galo, this heavy machinery to remove the rubble.

So, The civil defense crews that have been digging people out have literally been using like chisels, hammers on their bare hands for 15 months, big people out of the rubble. And there are many places where, uh, people gave up, uh, you just couldn't [01:05:00] move these massive walls of cement. And concrete to get to the people underneath, um, reminded of something that, um, my late colleague, who was, um, one of them just see it as Gaza correspondents before he was decapitated in an Israeli airstrike in August last year, um, was 27 years old.

He has a two year old daughter's in, um, he refused to leave Northern Gaza. His family went South. He stayed there because he won't, he was committed to reporting on what was happening. Until the day that he was killed alongside his cameraman Rami Rifi. Um, they just actually, they were killed on the same day.

Smite and he was assassinated and they were filming at his house, uh, or the rubble of his house where some people have come to pay their respects. And as they left and their press, uh, vehicle, uh, they were killed by an Israeli drone. Um, Smite wrote something just before he died. He tweeted it actually, which is [01:06:00] that he can't sleep because he keeps hearing the voices of the people trapped under the rubble as he walks by.

Because that, that's where the situation, it became impossible to lift or to remove the rubble by hand. And it was also too dangerous to stay in some of these places that had been bombed. That people would be walking by and hearing people trapped under the rubble. Until their voices faded away and they died.

That was a common experience for a lot of people in Gaza. And it's again, one of those things where you cannot comprehend it. I'm saying it to you. I don't know what that actually feels like. Um, but again, for a lot of families, that's the thing that they're thinking about, will I finally be able to bury my, my loved ones?

Will I finally be able to find them?

Gaza Ceasefire Explained Reading Between The Lines Part 3 - The Socialist Program - Air Date 1-16-25

LAYAN SIMA FULEIHAN: So the three, as close as we can know, because there's a variety of different leaks of what the terms of the actual agreement are, many of them have been corroborated multiple times.

So we, we feel that there's, this is a pretty accurate representation of what the ceasefire outlines. Even Biden himself. And of course he has an interest [01:07:00] in this, but he said, it's basically exactly the same as May. Um, it seems to be mostly the same, except for a few small appendixes. But we'll find out in the coming days, exactly, exactly the terms and the precise numbers.

But the face is. Very similar. It's a three phase agreement. The first phase, we have the most information about it because it's going to start soon. It's officially going to start on the 19th. There's a cessation of aggression. 19th

BRIAN BECKER - HOST, THE SOCIALIST PROGRAM: of January. Of

LAYAN SIMA FULEIHAN: January, on Sunday. We don't know the zero hour yet, but that will be announced, I'm sure, soon, after tomorrow's deliberations in the Israeli security cabinet.

Now, the 42 days. Already there's been a cessation of, uh, aggression. Um, but it's officially going to start.

BRIAN BECKER - HOST, THE SOCIALIST PROGRAM: Six weeks, 42 days is phase one. And as of right now, even though it's only announced and hasn't been approved by the Israeli cabinet, as of now there's cessation. As you talked about crowds in Gaza mingling with resistance fighters are out [01:08:00] actually celebrating.

So it appears a cessation. And then the actual agreement goes into effect. January 19th, one day before Donald Trump becomes president.

LAYAN SIMA FULEIHAN: Yes.

BRIAN BECKER - HOST, THE SOCIALIST PROGRAM: So what's, what's in phase one?

LAYAN SIMA FULEIHAN: So in phase one, there's multiple things. One is a prisoner exchange. So 33 of the Israelis who are being held captive in Gaza would be released.

That would be, uh, women and elderly. And injured, they will be released in return for a large number of Palestinian prisoners. We know that it will be about 1000 Palestinians who have been basically kidnapped from the Gaza territory after since October 7, 20,

BRIAN BECKER - HOST, THE SOCIALIST PROGRAM: Palestinians who have been arrested. Since October 7th,

LAYAN SIMA FULEIHAN: those horrific scenes of the Israeli occupation, rounding up men and, uh, forcing them to strip down, uh, and walk in the rubble and be subjected to [01:09:00] torture and be placed in these detention camps without any tracking of who they are.

BRIAN BECKER - HOST, THE SOCIALIST PROGRAM: Noteworthy, noteworthy land that These people, these thousand plus Palestinians who have been taken captive since October 7th, they're not called hostages. They're just called Palestinian prisoners, but they're hostages.

LAYAN SIMA FULEIHAN: Of course.

BRIAN BECKER - HOST, THE SOCIALIST PROGRAM: So these people are going to be released.

LAYAN SIMA FULEIHAN: A thousand of these people will be released.

Um, there will also be others who are released from the Israeli prisons. Uh, there will also be some number, and it's the It's a little bit unclear, but some number of people who were released who are serving life sentences in Israeli prisons. Now these are political prisoners, Brian. Every single Palestinian who's in a Israeli prison is a political prisoner.

It's illegal for Israel to be jailing people of another country, of another nation, uh, in international law. These are political prisoners. These are prisoners taken under conditions of occupation and colonial control. Now when someone's in there for a life sentence, [01:10:00] this means they're Sentenced for their political activity, their resistance activity.

They

BRIAN BECKER - HOST, THE SOCIALIST PROGRAM: are the leaders. Their

LAYAN SIMA FULEIHAN: leadership. Uh, so the Prisoner Exchange will also include, we don't know who, but, uh, a number of names from that category. Uh, now besides the Prisoner Exchange, and, and the Prisoner Exchange itself is, significant, and it's going to happen along the stages as well. Thirty three, uh, Israeli captives will be released in the first phase, then another number in the second phase, uh, and then possibly the bodies of those hostages that were killed bymajority of them were killed by the Israeli bombardment itselfwill also be exchanged, but that's still under negotiation.

The prisoner release itself, Brian, is a huge Achievement for the Palestinian people. You can't overstate the amount of optimism that it brings to the Palestinian people. The prisoner question for the Palestinian struggle is a central one. I think it's difficult for, uh, people who are, you know, getting their information from the U.

S. media to really see that impact, the [01:11:00] kind of joy that is accompanied by a prisoner release, by people returning home.

BRIAN BECKER - HOST, THE SOCIALIST PROGRAM: Is either has a family member or a friend who's in prison.

LAYAN SIMA FULEIHAN: There's no Palestinian family that doesn't know someone who has been taken from them, uh, and that's being held in these conditions of torture, uh, in these Israeli prisons.

So, the prisoner release itself is such a huge achievement that everyone is celebrating right now. On top of that, uh, there's also going to be a staged withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Territory. Right now

BRIAN BECKER - HOST, THE SOCIALIST PROGRAM: And again, this is all stage one.

LAYAN SIMA FULEIHAN: All stage one. Um, right now they're all, all over the Gaza territory.

They're still in active combat. Just since the past couple of days, maybe the past week, at least 14 Israeli soldiers have been killed in, in active, uh, fight with the Palestinian resistance. So they're still all there. Um, they've closed off the possibility for people who've been displaced from the North to return to the North, uh, by setting up, uh, basically a [01:12:00] defect, a border on the Netzerim axis, which is, goes right South of Gaza city.

BRIAN BECKER - HOST, THE SOCIALIST PROGRAM: So it's, it divides. Gaza east to west, dividing people, basically a wall so people can't go home and then to the north. To

LAYAN SIMA FULEIHAN: the north, yes. They cannot go back to the north. If you remember, and we've talked about it on the socialist program before, one of the proposals that was, the ideas that the Israeli military establishment was circulating was something called the general plan, the general's plan, where they would, uh, Find some way to occupy a significant area of the north of Gaza to create a buffer zone.

They would depopulate it either through massacring people or displacing people. Ethnically cleanse the north of its Palestinian population so they could use it as a buffer zone. That is being thrown out the window with this agreement. Because in the first stage, after seven days of the implementation of the first phase of this agreement, the corridor will be open for people to return to their homes in the north [01:13:00] by foot, and then after that, they will be able to return by vehicle.

BRIAN BECKER - HOST, THE SOCIALIST PROGRAM: And Israeli soldiers will leave this corridor?

LAYAN SIMA FULEIHAN: They will be leaving this corridor in a staged, uh, manner. So they'll start leaving it in the beginning of the agreement, and then they will continue leaving it until the second phase, where it seems to be that in the second phase, they will be fully leaving that, uh, part, the Netzerim Axis here.

Okay. South of Gaza City. People will be searched on their return because the condition is that they return without arms, without weapons, um, and it seems like the search will be done by some sort of security company or force that is determined by the mediators of this agreement. So we don't know the conditions of it, but Essentially, people are returning to the north.

On top of it, they'll also start to remove their forces from the Philadelphia axis, which the corridor, the southern border, that, um, the border between Rafah in the south and [01:14:00] Egypt, where the majority of supplies and aid, medicine, people going back and forth, All really happened through that crossing.

Netanyahu

BRIAN BECKER - HOST, THE SOCIALIST PROGRAM: said the Israelis were never going to leave that corridor.

LAYAN SIMA FULEIHAN: And that's why the May ceasefire, uh, negotiations failed. Because Netanyahu said he would never give up control of the border between Gaza and Egypt. Now, and he, and he promised the Israeli people that he would never give up control. In the ceasefire agreement, he's giving up control.

They will gradually reduce forces, um, and after the release of the last hostage from the first stage, they will complete their full withdrawal from the Philadelphia, Philadelphia corridor no later than the 50th day. So a couple of days into the second phase, but they will have a full withdrawal of, um, from the Rafah border crossing and there will be an immediate, once the ceasefire comes into effect, aid flowing in.

Up to 600 trucks a day. Egypt is already working on a mechanism to make this happen [01:15:00] according to Egyptian officials. Um, so, and people will be able to move back and forth, um, also in a phased manner through that border crossing, including wounded fighters will be able to go to seek treatment. A lot of people need medical treatment.

So many people need medical treatment will be able to start going to Egypt to receive that treatment.

The Ceasefire in Gaza w Mohammad Alsaafin Part 4 - American Prestige - Air Date 1-19-25

DEREK DAVISON - CO-HOST, AMERICAN PRESTIGE: The second and more obvious is the two red flags or the, that I wanted to talk about is obviously that the second and third phases of this deal don't exist yet. Um, they exist in the barest sense, uh, in that we know sort of what the big ticket items would be that, uh, the second phase would involve, as you alluded to earlier, the release of the remaining October 7th hostages, uh, as well as a full withdrawal, IDF withdrawal from from Gaza.

And then the third phase would involve the release of the bodies of October 7th hostages who have died and the development somehow negotiation of some sort [01:16:00] of reconstruction plan for Gaza. But that's it. That's all we know because the details still have to be ironed out in these negotiations that are supposed to start partway through the first phase.

I know that You know, there's, there's been a lot of talk about, well, this is that, that means this is effectively a six week ceasefire and it'll, the Israelis will resume fighting after that. And I've even seen, you know, Israeli media reporting that like Donald Trump has given Netanyahu the kind of wink, wink, nudge, nudge, you know, behind the scenes that, you know, it's, it's okay, we just do this six week thing.

And then you can go back to whatever you were doing and I'll support it. I'm a little skeptical about this because this is Donald Trump ceasefire now. And if it falls apart in six weeks, It'll be his failure to maintain it and i'm not sure that he's prepared to countenance that not to say that he wouldn't countenance it if it came to that but um, I don't know i'm a little skeptical that what are your feelings on on whether or not this is going to stick or If it's just gonna we're just going to see this first phase and [01:17:00] then back to back to the fighting

MOHAMMAD ALSAAFIN: I think the talk of uh Trump giving Netanyahu a wink and a nudge, um, is, is, is a bit of cope for the Israeli right wing.

Um, I think they, uh, they want to present this as, uh, as some kind of deal between Netanyahu and Trump and that, you know, they'll go back to fighting. Um, I, I'm skeptical as you are. I think other than this being Trump's ceasefire, um, I don't think even in Israel is going to be a political appetite to continue a war.

Um, I think, I think most Israelis. Understand that this war is pointless. They haven't been able to achieve any of the major goals that Netanyahu sold to them. Um, the only way the hostages were released has been through a ceasefire negotiations. Um, This notion of total victory, um, is absent. Like we just said, Hamas is still there and will remain there.

Um, and what's more, even the most fanatical amongst the Israelis, the ones who [01:18:00] actually thought they were going to, uh, build settlements in Beit Hanun and in Jabalia. Well, Israelis are going to be pulling out in a few weeks from those places too. Um, so there isn't a lot to, there is, there's no guarantee that beyond the first phase, uh, the fighting won't start again.

The only guarantee is that they have remained. There will remain, uh, quite a number of Israeli captives. Uh, that is the male soldiers that were captured in Gaza. Uh, after the end of the first phase. Um, so that's kind of the, um, that's the 11 card that Hamas can play. Right. Um, but I just think there's no appetite for work for a war that everyone agrees is pointless.

Um, there's There's no, there's nothing to be achieved by going back to the fighting.

DANIEL BESSNER - CO-HOST, AMERICAN PRESTIGE: So I have a, just a quick question about that. Uh, just to take a purely cynical, realistic view, so much of Gaza has been destroyed. I imagine that many people aren't going to want to live there anymore. And Trump [01:19:00] is, let's assume not genuinely a friend of the Palestinian national liberation.

And so that he doesn't like seeing these annihilation and he doesn't like the various elements of it, but obviously does he really give a shit if Israel annexes parts of the West Bank and makes them part of Israel? I would say no. So, Um, given, given that, um, it does seem like this might be a strategic victory if one adopts Likud and the rights, and generally a lot of Israel right now perspective on the world that Iran and Hezbollah have been enormously weakened.

Hamas has been enormously weakened. Israeli intelligence has shown to still be quite good in the wake of the failure of October 7th. Um. And effectively, there's a pretty good chance, I think, of them getting the green light for general annexation of large territories of the West Bank. So obviously, I think we should all be happy that the Vernichtungspolitik of the war in Gaza is over.

But Transcribed Um, it seems like Israel is [01:20:00] going to get quite a bit of what it wants. Am I missing something? Or is this, you know, we're happy it's over, but this was a strategic victory for Israel in basically every way, shape and form.

MOHAMMAD ALSAAFIN: Uh, I wouldn't say a strategic victory. I think whether or not Israel gets the green light to annex the West Bank is actually largely immaterial because Israel has effectively annexed the West Bank many years ago.

DANIEL BESSNER - CO-HOST, AMERICAN PRESTIGE: True. Yeah.

MOHAMMAD ALSAAFIN: And, and, and, and I, I don't say that with hyperbole. Um, I lived in the West Bank, um, until, until about, uh, 2009. And even back then there was full Israeli sovereignty over every inch of the West Bank, no Palestinian sovereignty. Um, if you are an Israeli, uh, you

DANIEL BESSNER - CO-HOST, AMERICAN PRESTIGE: Correct me if I'm wrong, Mohamed, but basically a lot of those quote unquote peace agreements were still denying Palestinian sovereignty, which is something that we in the United States never reported that these quote unquote Peace agreements still denied sovereignty.

The one thing that an agreement should lead to

MOHAMMAD ALSAAFIN: know the I mean, the Oslo Accords were actually were [01:21:00] were written as a temporary accords that was that were supposed to lead to final status negotiations. Um, that would lead to palestinian sovereignty. They never got there. So the say, so for example, when you talk about the palestinian authority and whatever they exercise in terms of authority in the West Bank is based on a 1993 agreement between the PLO and Israel that was designed to expire in 1999.

And we're now in 2024. So no, there, there's no, there's no Palestinian sovereignty. Um, and I think annexation might actually be a double edged sword for the Israelis. Um, I think for a lot of Israelis, especially their, uh, liberal defenders abroad, um, the notion that, uh, negotiations at a two state solution are on the table, um, help you kind of get past the, the apartheid and.

And the ethnic cleansing, um, once Israel officially annexes the West Bank, if that is what's to happen, um, and it's 3 million Palestinians, then you, you can't use that as a cudgel anymore. You can't talk about a two [01:22:00] state solution anymore. And so I think a lot of countries will be forced to reckon with that.

Um, now I don't have a huge amount of hope. in an international law, Western countries. Um, and I think the last 15 months have have have indicated that. Um, but I do think that actually it would put Israel in a much more difficult situation right now. I think it's perfectly it's got the best of both worlds where it has effectively annexed the West Bank without having to deal with any implications of it.

Um, and so I don't think that this notion that the Israelis actually are going to get to annex the West Bank as a prize. for ending the genocide in Gaza. Um, I don't think that's necessarily inevitable either.

SECTION B: CEASEFIRE POLITICS

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering Section B- Ceasefire Politics.

Biden on Gaza ceasefire 'The elements of this deal were what I laid out in detail' - The ReidOut - Air Date 1-15-25

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: But we begin tonight with big news out of the Middle East. Hamas and Israel have finalized a ceasefire deal that will release the remaining hostages and ensure the departure of Israeli forces from Gaza. The news was greeted with jubilation and tears from Tel Aviv to Khan Younis because [01:23:00] it's the first time there is real hope in the region.

The announcement comes just days before the transfer of power from President Biden to Donald Trump. Now this feels like historical deja vu. It's probably because a similar situation happened in 1981 when American hostages being held at the U S embassy in Tehran were freed just as Ronald Reagan took over from Jimmy Carter.

CLIP: Good evening on the 444th and final day of the hostage crisis, which is also the first day of the new Reagan presidency.

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: Here is how NBC's correspondent explained that deal.

CLIP: On the plane coming over, the Carter party told reporters that Iran will wind up with only three billion dollars after withholdings for claims and repayments of loans.

That Carter was close to agreement three times and almost had one just before the election. That the final deal was sealed at nine o'clock [01:24:00] yesterday morning Washington time, but the takeoff was probably held off just to embarrass Carter one more time.

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: A prominent Democratic politician at the time told the New York Times that he was a witness to Republican efforts to prevent the hostages from being freed.

Before election day, President Biden is trying to avoid a repeat of what happened to Carter and make clear that this deal was the fruit of his administration's labor.

JOE BIDEN: More than 15 months of conflict began with Hezbollah's brutal massacre on October the 7th. More than 15 months of terror for the hostages, their families, the Israeli people.

More than 15 months of suffering by the innocent people of Gaza. Fighting in Gaza will stop and soon the Hasidim will return home to their families. The elements of this deal are what I laid out in detail this past May, which was [01:25:00] embraced by countries around the world and endorsed overwhelmingly by the U.

N. Security Council.

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: President Biden and his national security team have been working for over a year to get Israel and Hamas to sign off on a deal. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has taken 12 trips to the region since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and CIA Director William Burns have made frequent trips to the region as well.

And President Biden is correct that this deal appears to be the exact same proposal that he announced last May. What changed? Who will assume office on Monday at noon? And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it no secret that he prefers Trump and wanted to deliver him a win. The Washington Post reported that Israel would gift something to Trump, but it was believed to be a deal on Lebanon.

According to reports, Netanyahu has been speaking with Trump for months while Trump was campaigning for [01:26:00] re election. Trump previously told Axios that Netanyahu never wanted peace with the Palestinians, but Trump told him to do what he had to do with Hamas. Additionally, some of the parents of hostages and Israeli soldiers have been livid at Prime Minister Netanyahu.

accusing him of being deceitful and of intentionally extending and expanding the war for his own political benefit, given how he was blamed for the security failures that led up to the October 7 attack. President Biden acknowledged that these are waning days, the waning days of his administration, but it was in the interest of the world for his administration to work with Trump's incoming administration to get the deal done.

JOE BIDEN: I'd also note this deal was developed and negotiated under my administration, but its terms will be implemented, for the most part, by the next administration. In these [01:27:00] past few days, we've been speaking as one team. I told my team to coordinate closely. With the incoming team to make sure we're all speaking with the same voice because that's what American presidents do.

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: Lacking the same sense of courtesy and decency, Trump immediately took credit for the deal. Yet another example of Trump putting his name on something someone else built. This deal, which Netanyahu delayed for as long as humanly possible, has hung over Biden's head for more than a year and was arguably a key factor in Vice President Harris losing the election.

As parts of the Democratic base peeled off and either stayed home or even voted for Trump as the so called peace candidate.

Ceasefire in Gaza w Akbar Shahid Ahmed - Long Reads - Air Date 1-25-25

DANIEL FINN - HOST, LONG READS: Before moving on to talk about what more we can expect from the Trump administration over the next four years. I want to ask you about the last days of the Biden administration and some of the statements that were made in relation to Gaza [01:28:00] by figures such as Joe Biden, Antony Blinken, and others.

Two of the statements that were widely circulated and discussed, one was from Biden where he said that Netanyahu's government initially wanted to carpet bomb Gaza and that he had to talk them out of this. Nice of a BB. I said, you can't be a corporate bomb in these communities. And he said to me, well, you did it.

Antony Blinken saying that he believes Hamas has now recruited new fighters on a scale to make up for their losses over the last year and more.

CLIP: We assess that Hamas has recruited almost as many new militants.

DANIEL FINN - HOST, LONG READS: But there were a number of other things that they said and other figures said. Did we learn anything new from them about the stance of the U.

S. towards Israel and towards Gaza and about what has been happening over the last almost 18 months? [01:29:00]

AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: I think the comment from President Biden around the carpet bombing, you know, that echoes this broader self justifying narrative that we've seen from the administration for a lot of the war, which is this idea that without us, the Israelis would have been behaving in these unbelievably violent ways.

And I think what that, what that really begs is the question of knowing that willingness and knowing the data and evidence you were getting from the ground of major attacks targeting civilian infrastructure, often deemed disproportionate by experts in international law and by people able to do the actual research, why would you let them go on with it anyway, right?

And I think you've seen Biden, Blinken, others in the administration do a kind of set of exit interviews to say, weren't we great? This could have been so much worse. And what that flies in the face of is their own [01:30:00] rhetoric of, We believe in international order, we believe in international law, we are upholding these institutions.

If you are in support of all of that, it's never in question, right, whether Israel can carpet bomb Gaza, it's just not permitted. It's not in question whether Israel can stop all humanitarian aid going into Gaza. Not how international law is supposed to work. So for the Biden administration's top figures to be saying, look, give us credit for asking the Israelis to stand by the bare minimum while often exceeding it, I think that's a very, very hard bill for people to swallow.

It's not going to have the effect that they think it will perhaps. In the very insular set of Washington foreign policymakers, this will be enough for them to regain entree to nice dinner parties and speak at various Munich security conferences and Aspen conferences and, you know, feel good about that.

[01:31:00] But I think the broader estimation of history will. still be quite negative. The ones that I was really struck by, Daniel, were, were from some other figures as well, which was Jack Lew, uh, who had been Biden's ambassador in Jerusalem, where the U. S. embassy is, and to Israel is located, despite, you know, all other countries, most other countries not doing that.

Jack Lew said, look, Israel was facing a narrative war as the And this comment he made said, you know, people would say, well, children have been killed by this Israeli attack, but when you look closer, they were children of Hamas fighters and that phrasing it haunts one, right? It's never going to leave you because what it's, it's really saying is there's so much in that as an, uh, there's an assumption of guilt, right?

By association, which is, Again, not the kind of principle [01:32:00] the U. S. is supposed to stand for. There's a, a real inching towards justifying truly the deaths of, of minors and of innocents. And I think that's where, where the Biden administration will be reflected is just how they have. pulled us all into litigating minutia when in fact the broad strokes of the campaign really do violate a lot of what they've said they should stand for and we haven't seen them reckon with that to a great degree.

The one person who expressed a little bit of regret rather than a self congratulatory note was, um, you know, a fellow Irish person, Daniel Samantha Power, the administrator of the U. S. Agency for International Development, who famously wrote the book, A Problem from Hell, about genocide, and of course, many people say that the U.

S. has enabled a genocide. In Gaza, Samantha Power, in her exit interview, said, She regrets [01:33:00] a ceasefire could not have been reached earlier. She declined to specify why or what she could have done differently. And also declined, interestingly, to comment on another situation that many are calling a genocide in Sudan, where the, where the U.

S. partner, the United Arab Emirates, is engaging in activity many people see as war crimes. On its way out, the administration has not done a lot of reflection. As you know, I'm, I'm working on a book on the administration's approach to Gaza. I'm talking to a lot of these people. I have been talking to them.

And, and their narratives, uh, to themselves and I think to their friends are very much about, look at this broader strategic picture. You know, Israel is stronger. Hezbollah is gone. Bashar Assad in Syria. is gone, an anti American pro Iran force. And I think that's something really interesting and to a degree, chilling about the way that after 15 months of war, after most likely [01:34:00] upwards of 60, 000 deaths, according to the latest studies, uh, and the decimation of a huge strip of land, their note is not, is still seeking credit.

It's still trying to present it in this rosy way. And I think that's been the most telling thing about the Biden administration's final statements here and also their effort to kind of wrench some credit for the ceasefire, deeply flawed and unquestionable as it is, I think that shows you that, that they don't want to go down in history as, as a reflective administration, at least not so far.

Egypt, Jordan Reject Trump Plan to Clean Out Gaza; Palestinians Return to N. Gaza in Historic Day Part 2 - Democracy Now! - Air Date 1-27-25

AMY GOODMAN: Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians are returning home to the north of Gaza for the first time since they were forced to flee their homes at the start of Israel’s war on Gaza over a year ago. A river of people that stretched for miles walked north along Gaza’s coastal road Monday carrying what’s left of their possessions. Most Palestinians will be returning to find [01:35:00] their homes reduced to rubble. The U.N. estimates 92% of homes in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged over the last 16 months.

President Trump is facing accusations of supporting ethnic cleansing in Gaza after saying he wants to, quote, “clean out the whole thing.” Trump called for Egypt and Jordan to take in Palestinians living in Gaza, while speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One Saturday. He told the reporters he had spoken to King Abdullah of Jordan.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I said to him, “I’d love you to take on more,” because I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now, and it’s a mess. It’s a real mess.

REPORTER: So, you’d like Jordan to house people from Gaza?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: To take people. I’d like Egypt to take people. I’m meeting with — I’m talking to General el-Sisi tomorrow sometime, I believe. And I’d like Egypt to take people, and I’d like Jordan to take people. I could — I mean, you’re talking about probably a million and a half [01:36:00] people. And we just clean out that whole thing. It’s — you know, it’s — over the centuries, that’s — that’s many, many conflicts, that site. And I don’t know. It’s — something has to happen. But it’s literally a demolition site right now. Almost everything’s demolished.

AMY GOODMAN: Egypt and Jordan have both rejected Trump’s suggestion and emphasized a two-state solution ensuring Palestinian statehood is the only way forward. Hamas and displaced Palestinians in Gaza also rejected the idea of being forced out of Gaza. This is Magdy Seidam, a Palestinian waiting to return to northern Gaza.

MAGDY SEIDAM: [translated] The call by the U.S. president is completely rejected. Completely. Completely. If he thinks he will forcibly displace the Palestinian people, this is impossible. Impossible. The Palestinian people firmly believe that this land is theirs, this soil is their soil. No matter how much Israel tries to [01:37:00] destroy, break and to show people that it had won, in reality, it did not win. It destroyed and ruined things and showed the people that it is a failed state.

AMY GOODMAN: Trump’s suggestion that more than a million Palestinians should be moved out of Gaza to neighboring Arab states weren’t his first controversial comments on Gaza since returning to office. Shortly after his inauguration last week, Trump said he is, quote, “not confident” the ceasefire will remain in place. He said Gaza appeared to be a, quote, “massive demolition site” that should be rebuilt.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: You know, Gaza is interesting. It’s a phenomenal location: on the sea, the best weather. You know, everything is good. It’s like — some beautiful things could be done with it. But it’s very interesting. But some fantastic things could be done with Gaza.

Ceasefire in Gaza w Akbar Shahid Ahmed Part 2 - Long Reads - Air Date 1-25-25

DANIEL FINN - HOST, LONG READS: Before thinking about what the long term picture may be, I have to ask you about whether you think this deal [01:38:00] is going to stick, is going to lead to a permanent ceasefire, because of course it does come in different phases, there are different phases that have to be completed, and we did have a previous temporary truce towards The end of 2023 that at that time led to an exchange of prisoners, but which was immediately followed by a resumption of fighting, which went on for more than a year.

There have been reports that Netanyahu has been trying to persuade some of his right wing coalition partners to stay on board by promising that he will resume the offensive against Hamas. in a few weeks or a few months time. So what prospect do you think there is that this deal will prove to have been a temporary phase or is it going to lead to a more or less permanent cessation?

AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: I, I think about that by looking really at the calendar, right? And what I mean by that is we're now [01:39:00] already almost halfway to the place where, uh, the parties to the deal should be talking about setting up the second phase of the deal. And conditions have not improved in a direction that suggests peace is on the horizon.

So what I mean by that is we're seeing in the occupied West Bank, in Jenin, a really expanding violent operation by the Palestinian Authority, supported by the Israelis, very much working hand in hand as they have for decades. I think that raises the cost for Hamas of being seen as continuing with the deal.

It also, suggested on the Israeli side, there is a desire still to move forward militarily against Palestinians rather than be seen as cutting a deal with them. And I do think that's linked to, uh, the coalition government dynamics. So, so when Netanyahu agreed to the deal, he did see one of his far right allies.

Uh, Itamar Ben Gavir quit the government, but his other most extreme [01:40:00] ally, Belazel Smotrich, remains in the government and is the finance minister, and has said he has a promise from Netanyahu that fighting will continue after the first phase of the ceasefire, right? That the war is not over, and that Israel will somehow achieve this goal of destroying Hamas, which, as we know, remains extremely elusive.

So I think that, that factor is very much driving Netanyahu, the escalation in the West Bank suggests that, that he's not feeling a need to clamp down on, on violence against Palestinians. And then we are just one week away from a really critical deadline, which is when UNRWA, the chief UN agency supporting Palestinians and really the backbone of any humanitarian response and really of infrastructure.

In Gaza, the Israeli Knesset parliament has said, you can't operate, we're going to shut you down, right? And that, that looming deadline without any solution [01:41:00] is another reason why I think we're not likely to see a second phase or something very significant will have to change. Because we also need kind of the same factor that got Netanyahu here, the kind of Trump trepidation factor, I must give something.

Sort of be more conciliatory on the humanitarian aid front, which is a critical factor in whether the talks will continue. There's no indication that the Trump administration will do anything to defend UNRWA, to push for any kind of serious humanitarian response for Gaza. And without that, I don't really see how there's an appetite among Palestinians or, frankly, in the broader region, including among mediators, the Arab states, Qatar and Egypt that are working on these negotiations.

I don't know how they kind of bring everyone to the table if it looks like it's just continued warfare and continued and frankly expanding misery for [01:42:00] Palestinians in Gaza because you've also seen the U. S. turn around and say, We are pulling back on our humanitarian and development aid contributions.

So that has me quite worried that we may not see the second phase of this deal. But there are other dynamics to track. I think, um, the release of some of the hostages. taken by Hamas on October 7th in a violation of international law. It's important to remember. Those folks are going to be talking about not only what they've experienced, but they're going to be talking about what it felt like to be in Gaza for 15 months.

Not knowing whether their government was going to ever bring them home and reunite them with their loved ones. Being there in a situation where, regardless of how they were cared for, they were in a really active war zone where there were limited supplies. As that information spreads, maybe the war in Gaza comes home to Israeli society in a different way [01:43:00] and changes the dynamics there to create a greater impetus for Netanyahu to accept more of a deal just to bring more hostages home.

So that's kind of unknowns, I think.

SECTION C: THE EMPIRE

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Up next, Section C- The Empire.

On the Situation in Syria and its Implications for the Region Part 2 - Revolutionary Left Radio - Air Date 1-6-25

BREHT O'SHEA - HOST, REVOLUTIONARY LEFT RADIO: Um, so well, something that's definitely worth keeping an eye on, but stepping back a moment, regardless of Assad as an individual. There's a certain role, um, that, that Syria played in the region under, under Assad, um, when it came to, you know, Iran, uh, the axis of resistance, broader forces of imperialism. We know that it's, you know, in the last several years and during the Syrian civil war, it was, uh, you know, kind of like a regional, uh, War, but also you had global players like the us and russia fighting in syria Terrorist organizations turkey's always trying to you know influence events there as well So how should we understand the role of syria in the last couple of decades?

When it [01:44:00] comes to imperialism when it comes to the axis of resistance, etc And the role that they served in those broader processes

ANGIE: I would say that for me. It's been very clear at several points in the last six years That a contingency for the removal of the sanctions against Syria was a degree of normalization with Israel.

In that regard, I would argue that Syria maybe acted as a wall. I think that we'll be analyzing this for, for decades to come, particularly as more comes out about the particularities of the Assad regime and the Bass Party's involvement up to the, the final moments. But Syria acted as, as a wall that stood.

firmly against further occupation that stood firmly against any attempts to expand or any attempts to intensify the occupation. How true that was, [01:45:00] particularly in later years, debatable. Very, very highly debatable, but there was a, at least in soft power, a very clear, firm no from the Assad regime and the state of Syria that it would not be in any way complicit with the ongoing actions of the Israeli occupation or any actor that chose to engage with that occupation.

That is setting aside the supply routes that it offered for Hezbollah and Hamas. It sets aside that Syria is home for several Palestinian resistance factions and just countless radical thinkers and scholars that have informed our resistance in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine over the decades. Syria, for what it was worth, was the one area [01:46:00] of the region that imperialism had not infiltrated.

BREHT O'SHEA - HOST, REVOLUTIONARY LEFT RADIO: Yeah, and of course, Syria was one of those seven countries that's now become quite, you know, well known in certain circles that pay attention to this stuff, that Syria is on this list, um, you know, led by the U. S. of countries that have long, You know, been in the crosshairs of imperialism on behalf of, of Israel in the region, but on behalf of, of Western imperial interests more broadly.

Um, and many of those countries, you know, have in one way or another been destabilized, toppled, infiltrated, et cetera. And of course they have Iran in their, in their crosshairs, uh, next, it would seem, but kind of even stepping back from, from that and kind of learning about this history. You mentioned the Syrian civil war kind of, oh, Ed, you have something to add to that before I move on?

I apologize. No, I just wanted to say that part of the thing that made Syria such a prize for the imperialist powers is, as you said, it was one of the very few states in the region that [01:47:00] had not been fully infiltrated by imperialism. Uh, it was a robust economy for most of its modern history, was under the banner of Arab socialism, specifically of the Ba'athist strain, which Ba'athism is a very broad ideology that we don't have time to get into here, but One of the core tenets that the Syrian state enacted was to nationalize its resources for the betterment of its people.

Now, as Angie has said, and I think the best way that people have described, especially Syria under the Assad family, is undemocratic but pluralistic. With, in the earlier years, more robust social programs, you know, uh, It was a mixed economic model whereby the state played a central role in planning and caring for the betterment of the people, but it wasn't waging class warfare against the national bourgeoisie.

We should be very clear that [01:48:00] both Assad, both Hafez and Bashar were anti communist, but at the same time, they managed to develop an incredibly sophisticated healthcare system, incredibly sophisticated education, national education system, which, by the way, led to Syria becoming the art capital at one point of The Arab world, as some might say.

And its housing was even more accessible for us here in the United States. You could not be evicted for not paying your rent under this Ba'athist version of Arab Socialism. Now, in the 1980s, in a memo I'll get more into later, the U. S. explicitly outlined, the CIA explicitly outlined, that their goal was to overthrow Assad and replace it with a, quote, Sunni regime controlled by business oriented moderates, unquote.

And with that comes the need for Western aid and investment to [01:49:00] build Syria's private economy. And that is, frankly, exactly what we are seeing now. Jelani recently announced that he hopes to open up Syria's market towards a more liberal model. So, the specifics of how Bashar had to implement these structural readjustment programs after the fall of the Soviet Union is a conversation for much later time.

But, I just wanted to say that Syria has been the prize for the United States for a very long time. Yeah. And there's, there's three main ways that you get on the wrong side of U. S. led imperialism, which is to nationalize your resources, i. e. not let them be up for grabs for multinational capital. Um, opposing imperial interests in your region or organizing your society along anti capitalist or socialist lines.

And of course, that last one wasn't present, but they don't all three need to be present. Even one of them can be present, and you've put, you've made yourself an enemy of the U. S. led Imperial Corps. And yeah, nationalizing resources and opposing imperial interests. [01:50:00] again, we see any state that takes that tack is going to be put in the crosshairs.

And so Syria has certainly been in the crosshairs for a very long time.

Gaza Ceasefire Explained Reading Between The Lines Part 4 - The Socialist Program - Air Date 1-16-25

LAYAN SIMA FULEIHAN: I agree with you. I, I mean, the changes, the transformation of the way people understand Palestine, Gaza has become in many ways the center of the struggle against imperialism, and it has rapidly expanded the people who see themselves as part of that struggle.

It has, what has happened over the past 15 months has on the one hand shown the The nobleness of the Palestinian cause, the true intention of the Palestinian people who are fighting for their right to live on their land, fighting against an occupation, an imperialist, colonialist occupation that is it.

The most brutal that will go to any means, uh, to exterminate, to attempt to exterminate the resistance and the fact that the Palestinian people have resisted this [01:51:00] and have deflected Israel from and the United States from achieving their military objectives, that is a huge inspiration to people. It changes the way you can see the future for many young people in the United States.

For example, they have never known a day. When the United States is not at war, whether or not it's being spoken about in the media, the idea that the U. S. isn't in control of all territories on the world can feel, it can feel like it's an inevitability. But what October 7 did was, and since then, was one, destroy the image of U.

S. imperialism as some sort of benevolent state. Force that's keeping the world order together. It destroyed it completely. The American people don't have Trusts in or see the White House as a legitimate moral authority anymore So people of the world do not see it that way either it creates a level of doubt every time Biden or now Trump or Blinken or Rubio [01:52:00] or anyone in the past current or next administration is going to go out and say, this is what's happening.

People are going to second guess it. They're going to say, why are you saying that? Because they've lived through the past 15 months where they've seen on their phones, the massacre of, of unarmed, uh, civilians of children, mass starvation. All with the tax money of American citizens and the budget of the United States.

So it's completely exposed the agenda of U. S. imperialism. That is irreversible. People, when they go through that experience, they only get more and more consciousness. They don't go backwards. Once you see it, you can't forget it. And it's, it's a, it's a massive, massive change. I don't think we can really, Understate how important that is for the long arc of the Palestinian liberation struggle, because it was never going to be one in one battle.

I mean, it's going up against the wealthiest, mightiest militaries of the world. Now, when the U. S. is [01:53:00] reshaping the Middle East, when they're trying to carry out their plan to reshape the Middle East, they have to do it in a context in which they are seen for what they truly are. Uh, imperialist, brutal, monstrous, genocidal force.

It's going to be much more difficult for them to get the legitimacy to complete their project, uh, than, than it was before. And The question, the right to resist occupation and colonization and imperialism is now undeniable. The Palestinian people put that back on the table. The question of struggling against your occupiers is no longer a question.

People saw how important it is. They understand that. This is also an irreversible fact.

BRIAN BECKER - HOST, THE SOCIALIST PROGRAM: Yeah. And I think it's important for us just to take a moment to, to parse the language because Obviously, October 7th was a violent act, you know, when the Palestinian fighters came in to is [01:54:00] called the State of Israel.

That's a violent act. And anybody who, you know, wants a new world would prefer the world to be peaceful. They would prefer the world not to have violence. But when the Israelis routinely bomb Gaza, which they've done, You know, over and over again. I mean, there have been many, many wars, even in the last 20 years, where thousands of people in Gaza have been destroyed.

LAYAN SIMA FULEIHAN: They call it mowing the lawn operations.

BRIAN BECKER - HOST, THE SOCIALIST PROGRAM: The Israelis use this sort of. Uh, clinical term, we're mowing the lawn, meaning we're going to cut down the resistance. We're going to, we're going to, from time to time, we have to mow the lawn. That's not called terrorism. It's not even actually called violence. It's always called self defense.

Now, when the Palestinians came across the wall into Israel on October 7th, they were coming into a part of historic [01:55:00] Palestine. That had been Palestinian villages, homes, wooden homes and stone homes that were either burned to the ground if they were wood or shattered, broken up if they were stone by the Israelis.

All of the Arab villages in that area, right outside of Gaza, were destroyed as part of the Israeli occupation. military's orders after 1948. So it would be the Palestinian people going back to their homes that had been demolished, violently demolished. And again, use the language violence. Why is that never described as violence?

It's called Israeli independence in the media. That was violence. That was violence. Now, in 2018, the Palestinian resistance forces in Gaza wanted to do something that was nonviolent in the same area, same [01:56:00] area, the same wall that was breached on October 7th. What did they do? Every Friday they came and they had these big nonviolent protests.

They were called the Great March of Return, meaning they could look over the wall and say, we're We want to go home. Those are our homes. Those are our villages. So they use this kind of symbolic, performative, peaceful protest. And the Israeli military shot them. They sniped them. They shot them many times in the legs or the arms, but frequently in the head or the chest.

They killed people in wheelchairs. At the great wall of return,

LAYAN SIMA FULEIHAN: they killed the emergency medical aid people coming in to treat the wounded from the had been shot from the protests and what did the U.

BRIAN BECKER - HOST, THE SOCIALIST PROGRAM: S. government and the U. S. media say about the great march of return, the peaceful protest in the same area, they said [01:57:00] nothing, they didn't condemn it, they didn't criticize it, they were like, uh, uh, the complicated Palestinian Israeli conflict.

So then the Palestinians have no ability to have a peaceful protest because they're being shot down by the Israeli defense forces. So the option then is if all peaceful protest avenues are foreclosed, picking up the gun also becomes the only available option. Now, George Washington picked up the gun.

I'm very sure King George III would have branded George Washington a terrorist. Um, John Brown picked up the gun against the system of slavery, and the American government sent Robert E. Lee, who at that time was the head of the U. S. military, to suppress it because John Brown was the terrorist, not the slave owners.

who impose violence every day, every hour, every minute to maintain a system of slavery, they were never characterized as terrorists or violent. So I want to, [01:58:00] I want to say all these things, not that they're not obvious, but they need to be said because when we talk about language and the language of violence, the language of terrorism, we also have to recognize that the language of the imperialists Always whitewashes their own, their own violence, which is constant.

And when you scale it up between the violence of the oppressed, the colonized, and the violence of the oppressors, the colonizers, there's no comparison. Again, it's really important when we're fighting this battle of ideas about the narrative. To reject the notion that Palestinian resistance equals terrorism and Israeli violence, American violence equals self defense.

These terms are flawed.

On the Situation in Syria and its Implications for the Region Part 3 - Revolutionary Left Radio - Air Date 1-6-25

BREHT O'SHEA - HOST, REVOLUTIONARY LEFT RADIO: Now, we've been talking about, you know, the, the The machinations of the Imperial Corps and other countries, and so many other countries are involved in one way or another in Syria, and what's happening, and there's so many competing interests with regards to [01:59:00] what Syria becomes.

Um, but specifically, I'm interested in the roles of the United States, of Turkey, and of Israel in the recent, um, toppling of Assad. So can you talk a little bit about the U S Turkey and Israel's role in all of this and kind of what they stand to gain in the region now that Assad is gone? And, and this certainly ties back to, to the Palestinian resistance as well.

ANGIE: Yeah, sorry. Collecting my thoughts a little bit on that one too. Uh, I don't know if there's an end to what they stand to gain. Unfortunately, Turkey has long been in the on this sort of neo Ottoman streak in terms of rhetoric and I would say behavior. Uh, a friend of mine, a very close friend and, and scholar who I admire a great deal, once said that Israeli nationalism and Turkish nationalism are very often two sides of the same coin.

And that's truly the, the pinnacle of what I think we're seeing here. Erdogan has [02:00:00] long sort of sought out. More control over Syria, whether that meant Syria remained under Assad and he was just able to manipulate it more overtly, or it meant he was physically able to go in and insert the Turkish pound into Aleppo and wave the Turkish flag on the citadel of Aleppo.

So I think there's something in the culture of how these two actors wage their wars. That should be, when I say these actors, I mean Turkey and Israel, um, that is really interesting. The, the techniques that they, they manage, the, the rhetoric that they inspire in their supporters and in their, their footmen is eerily similar.

And I think what both of them stand to, to gain in this situation is economic power, often literally just a land grab. I think Israel is seeing this as a land grab and it's. It's not going to be [02:01:00] resisted. It's clear that the new government, if not setting strict plans, has an idea towards normalization with the entity.

So that's a clear and huge blow to the resistance in the region, just in terms of its legitimacy and its recognition by the states around it. The resistance loses an ally in the Syrian state, that is an immeasurable loss. At least in the moment, I, I, my faith is fully in the resistance and I believe in its victory and every fiber of my being, but we can't then ignore the manipulations done to weaken it and to, to put it in positions of vulnerability.

And I think that that is ultimately. [02:02:00] What Syria has become in the past three weeks is a huge vulnerable sore that can be taken advantage of, again, by any of the actors around it or that are able to get a foot in.

BREHT O'SHEA - HOST, REVOLUTIONARY LEFT RADIO: Definitely. And yeah, there's already, of course, been reports of HTS, um, having open conflict with aspects of the Lebanese army.

Um, you know, as you said, Israel has used this as an opportunity to grab land, to bomb parts of Syria. The U. S. is certainly interested in weakening, I mean, Iran's position, the axis of resistance more broadly, all of their enemies in the region. Um, so all of these countries certainly, um, stand to, to gain in various ways.

And we can already see are already gaining, um, in, in various ways. And, and that's kind of a, a brutal reality of, of what's happening. But on the other end, I'll go ahead, please.

ANGIE: Sorry, if I can add really quickly, it's also really, really important to, to recognize that one of the first things [02:03:00] that the HTS, one of their first directives that they employed was that all factions of the Palestinian resistance within Syria completely disarm immediately.

So that resulted in huge numbers of PFLP being, whether displaced from the regions that they're sitting in currently or Seeking new safety. These are visible entities that we're talking about. We've also seen huge populations that were associated with the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party, the SSNP, in Syria, moving to Lebanon.

So these individual Syrians and individuals that were associated closely with the resistance and with parties that have been allied with and materially aiding the resistance since. either its inception or at least since October 7th, have now been slowly but surely either moving out, displaced from, or pushed out of Syria.

And [02:04:00] that's something that's going to have a huge impact on how our ability to defend the resistance within Syria carries on in the future.

11 Men Freed After 20+ Years of Extreme Deprivation. Will Biden Close Guantánamo for Good - Democracy Now! - Air Date 1-8-25

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: After more than 20 years of being imprisoned without charge or trial at Guantánamo Bay, the Pentagon has transferred 11 Yemeni men to Oman to restart their lives. These men had been approved for transfer for years but remained behind bars because of political or diplomatic obstacles. Before arriving at Guantánamo, four of the men transferred to Oman on Monday had been held at secret overseas CIA prisons known as black sites, where torture was common. In recent weeks, the U.S. has transferred four other Guantánamo prisoners.

This latest push at the end of the Biden administration brings the total number of men detained at Guantánamo down to 15, the fewest since the George W. Bush administration turned Guantánamo into a military prison for mostly Muslim men taken into custody around the world during the so-called war on terror. A total of 780 men have been detained at Guantánamo [02:05:00] since 2002. Rights groups are calling on the Biden administration to resettle Guantánamo’s last 15 prisoners and close the notorious prison once and for all. Six of those remaining have never been charged with a crime. Three have already been cleared for transfer by the Biden administration. The government spends half a billion dollars a year keeping the prison and the court at Guantánamo open for this small number of men.

For more on this story, we’re joined here in New York by two guests. Ramzi Kassem is with us, professor of law at CUNY, City University of New York, represented Guantánamo prisoners Moath al-Alwi and Sanad al-Kazimi, who have just been released and flown to Oman. Pardiss Kebriaei is senior staff attorney with Center for Constitutional Rights. Her last client, Sharqawi Al Hajj, was among the 11 Yemeni prisoners just transferred.

We welcome you both back to Democracy Now! Pardiss, let’s begin with you. The significance of [02:06:00] this move by President Biden?

PARDISS KEBRIAEI: You know, Amy, I’ll start with the men and their families. Twenty-three years, they’ve been in prison, in the most extreme deprivation. It’s prison. Guantánamo is prison, and it’s then some, for 23 years. So, the release of these people and their freedom for the first time after all of this time, the chance to reunify with their families and begin to recover and rebuild, is — you know, it’s hard to overstate the enormity of that for them.

Tell us about Sharqawi.

Sharqawi is 51. He’s been inside since — I think he was captured when he was 28, 29.

Where?

Abroad in Pakistan. You know, it’s been 23 years in Guantánamo. He’s gone through his entire thirties and forties there. He’s lost both of his parents in prison. He is among the men you mentioned who was held in [02:07:00] CIA sites before he was brought to Guantánamo in 2004. He was held in those sites for over two years and experienced —

What was he charged with?

Nothing. Nothing. He wasn’t charged with anything. None of the men — the vast majority, most of the men at Guantánamo have never been charged with anything. There are nine people in the system now who have been

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: charged or convicted.

And explain why Guantánamo exists. Precisely for that reason, right? So you can engage in extrajudicial — explain what extrajudicial laws are, that you can be held for 23 years and never charged.

PARDISS KEBRIAEI: I mean, Guantánamo was set up as the place to — it was an intelligence-gathering operation. The point of it was to establish a place offshore where people could be held outside the bounds of the law, without access to courts, incommunicado, and where they could be interrogated. That was the — it was an intelligence-gathering operation from the beginning. That’s why [02:08:00] the site was chosen. And they were held without charge, without access to lawyers or courts for two years into their detention. The treatment they suffered was largely — was for the purpose of breaking them down. I mean, Guantánamo has such a long history, that we’ve forgotten. It’s been documented in scores. But the things that these people have been through — and Sharqawi, you know, speaks on his behalf — in CIA sites is the worst, the worst of what we do. So, in terms of the significance, you know, it is the end of that acuteness, the acuteness of that, and a chance to, you know, start —

Will they be imprisoned

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: in Oman, or will they be free?

PARDISS KEBRIAEI: They will not. They will not. They have landed as free people. Oman has taken people in before. There are over — there are about 30 people who were taken in, in 2015 to 2017. Oman provided them [02:09:00] support and rehabilitation. It’s been a relatively good resettlement. There are questions about the group that was — the Yemenis who were sent there before were sent back, against their will in some cases, to Yemen, after years of being in Oman. And there is a question about that. And it’s important to say that by deciding to take these men in, Oman has an obligation of protection and support.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Let me ask Ramzi Kassem about the two men that you represented, and that you in the last two years have served as senior policy adviser at the White House and also with your students have represented 15 prisoners at Guantánamo, at Bagram Air Base, other secret or U.S. — disclosed U.S. facilities worldwide. Tell us about the two men.

RAMZI KASSEM: Moath al-Alwi is also a Yemeni national. He’s one of the very first prisoners who arrived at Guantánamo almost. I mean, the prison was opened on January 11th, 2002. He was on the second or the third plane. You could tell by his low internment serial number, [02:10:00] 028. He was never charged with any crime. He was, like the majority of prisoners at Guantánamo, sold for a bounty, $5,000 to $15,000, that the U.S. government was paying to tribes in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region for so-called Arabs out of place. And, you know, by the government’s own allegations, Mr. al-Alwi never so much as fired a shot at U.S. forces or their allies. Still, he spent 23 years, over half of his life, at Guantánamo. He became an accomplished artist at that time.

Sanad al-Kazimi, like Pardiss’s client, Sanad al-Kazimi survived the CIA black sites. He was disappeared in the United Arab Emirates, survived severe forms of physical and psychological torture at a prison that the prisoners who survived it called “the prison of darkness” or “the dark prison.” The CIA called it the “Salt Pit” or “Cobalt” in the Senate’s report about the torture that happened there. [02:11:00] And he was brought to Guantánamo in 2004. He was also never charged with a crime. He has four kids that he hasn’t seen for the better part of their lives. And, you know, he was looking forward to, as much as possible, try to rebuild and try to reintegrate these roles as a father.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Tell me about the art that al-Alwi — I mean, he is a real — I mean, the level of artistry here. What was Trump’s response when The New York Times did a profile of him as an artist?

RAMZI KASSEM: Yeah, the Trump administration at the time and the Department of Defense under President Trump at the time declared that — basically, banned Guantánamo art, declared that the prisoners could no longer export their art from the island prison to the outside world, all of that because there was a show displaying the art, not just of Mr. al-Alwi but many of the other prisoners, at John Jay College, which is part of the City University of New York. And so, the Department of Defense [02:12:00] decided to impose a ban on Guantánamo art, declaring that the art was literally the property of the U.S. government. We had officials threaten some of our clients that their art would be seized and destroyed. Now, thankfully, you know, our understanding is that Mr. al-Alwi was able to take much of his art with him to Oman, and he looks forward to continuing with that skill set to express himself.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: We just have about a minute. What does Biden need to do? He has what? Just over a week left.

RAMZI KASSEM: Guantánamo has always been a question of political will. Biden actually has an opportunity to do more than he has already done. Perhaps the single most remarkable thing about the transfer of the 11 prisoners this week is that there has been complete silence from the Republican camp. And that’s because Guantánamo is no longer as politically valuable as it once was. The Republicans — and this may be the depressing way of looking at it — the Republicans have so thoroughly [02:13:00] won on every front, including with the last election, that they no longer need to beat up the Democrats over Guantánamo. And in that lies an opportunity for President Biden.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And even with DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, the half a billion dollars spent on a prison — for what? It’s now 15 men, Pardiss? Your final comment?

PARDISS KEBRIAEI: And concretely, there are six of the 15 men have never been charged, will never be charged. Three of those men have been cleared for transfer and are awaiting transfer. Those men should be transferred, at a minimum, and that includes a CCR client who remains, Guled Duran Hassan from Somalia. At a minimum, the DOJ, this DOJ, should drop its opposition to their habeas cases, to habeas cases to anyone who will remain.

And are you calling for the

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: prison to be closed?

PARDISS KEBRIAEI: We are calling for the end of the system of indefinite detention to close. And they are very, very close to doing that. That can be done.

Iraqis Tortured at Abu Ghraib Win $42 Million Judgment Against U.S. Military Contractor CACI - Democracy Now! - Air Date 11-14-24

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: A federal jury in Virginia has ordered the U.S. military contractor CACI to pay $42 million to three Iraqi men who were tortured at the [02:14:00] notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The landmark verdict came after 16 years of litigation, the first time a civilian contractor has been found legally responsible for the gruesome abuses at Abu Ghraib, which included murder, sexual assault, rape, the use of attack dogs, sleep deprivation, prolonged isolation, dietary manipulation, induced hypothermia, mock executions and the humiliation of prisoners.

We’re joined right now by Baher Azmy, legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represented the Abu Ghraib plaintiffs.

In these last few minutes we have, Baher, talk about what actually this lawsuit has been about and who wins this multimillion-dollar settlement.

BAHER AZMY: Yeah, this lawsuit has been about justice and accountability for three Iraqi men — our clients, Salah, Suhail and Asa’ad — who exhibited, I think, just awe-inspiring courage and resilience to fight for 16 [02:15:00] years and get over every innumerable hurdle CACI threw in its way to deflect responsibility, to have their voice heard by a jury. And as you said, it’s also the first time a jury has ever had really the opportunity to review and judge U.S. practices, in this case by a private military contractor, in the 20 years since 9/11 and despite the horrific number of abuses inflicted on many, many dozens of other torture victims.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: I mean, Blackwater is a military contractor, very well known. Explain what CACI, or now known as CACI, did.

BAHER AZMY: Yeah, so —

And when was it?

In 2003, CACI was hired by the United States government under a lucrative contractor to provide, quote, “expert interrogators” in Abu Ghraib. And they sent [02:16:00] a number of highly unqualified individuals. The two qualified people who were there actually were whistleblowers and told CACI that they were seeing abuses there and needed to leave.

And then, as it turned out, in the kind of command vacuum that persisted in Abu Ghraib, it was the CACI interrogators who took control and ordered military police, including military police who were court-martialed and spent time in prison for the very abuses CACI ordered them to undertake to, quote, “soften up” detainees, set the conditions, particularly in the night shift. And all our clients suffered the kinds of abuses you regrettably showed on the screen.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: So, the photos of Abu Ghraib that shocked the world, naked prisoners with bags over their heads, piled on top of each other in a human pyramid as an American soldier, Sabrina Harman, grins behind them. Her colleague Charles Graner can be seen smiling, giving a [02:17:00] thumbs-up. Interestingly, Sabrina Harman testified on behalf of the plaintiffs and broke down on the stand.

BAHER AZMY: Yeah, it was really remarkable and transformative testimony, because she’s one of the co-conspirators who was taking direction from military intelligence, including CACI, to harm detainees. And she’s somebody who expressed — like a lot of the MPs, just was broken by this experience. And what came out in the trial is military generals who investigated Abu Ghraib and documented sadistic, wanton systemic abuses were outraged. The military police who were part of the CACI scheme were broken. And the only person who has never taken responsibility is CACI, until now.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: I want to go to end with one of the plaintiffs, Salah Al-Ejaili, [02:18:00] who was on Democracy Now! a decade ago. He talked about his time in solitary confinement at Abu Ghraib.

CLIP: [translated]

TRANSLATION: These interrogations that happened every two or three days would last for an hour, an hour and a half or two hours, in this manner. The details of the interrogations were different. In some cases, they would bring dogs, then start the interrogation. In other cases, they’d put you in a place and throw cold water or hot tea on you, then start the interrogation. But, of course, all the interrogations were conducted while you were kept naked and hooded, and they’d ask you questions to which you answer. I stayed for 40 days in a solitary cell, and 70% of that time I was kept naked.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: That’s Abu Ghraib prisoner Salah Al-Ejaili. He now lives in Sweden.

BAHER AZMY: He now lives in Sweden, yeah. And just to clarify, the jury awarded each of the plaintiffs $3 million in compensatory [02:19:00] damages and $33 million in punitive damages, because they saw right through CACI’s deflection and finally held them responsible for the egregious and reckless conduct the jury found they engaged in. So, it is a small victory in the context of [inaudible] human rights efforts in the global war on terrorism that so many people have been involved in —

Five seconds.

— over the 20 years. But it’s still significant.

Katherine Gallagher on Abu Ghraib Verdict Part 2 - CounterSpin - Air Date 11-29-24

JJ: I sort of resent the fact, though I understand it, that it’s being reported solely as a lawsuit, and not a human rights crisis. And the coverage as a lawsuit means, first of all, we see a note of monetary outcomes: These folks are getting millions!

And then, also, I see the Washington Post quoting CACI, saying CACI employees say, “None of them laid a hand on detainees.” [02:20:00] Well, “laid a hand on,” like, I don’t know, that sounds like language you got from somewhere else.

But, also, plaintiffs are described as “saying” they were restrained, “claiming” they were tortured. There’s always this degree of difference. And I wonder, I wish, in some ways, we could move it outside of just the lawsuit framework, and talk about the human rights crisis that Abu Ghraib actually presents and presented for the United States.

KATHERINE GALLAGHER: “The jury found not that our clients ‘claimed’ that they were tortured, but that our clients were subjected to torture.”

KATHERINE GALLAGHER: I appreciate that comment and that perspective. And just a few reactions to the language that you cited: What’s important here is, our clients testified in court, under oath, and there were findings made by a jury, factual findings against clear law. And Judge Brinkema gave the jury their legal instructions against which to apply [02:21:00] facts.

So the jury found not that our clients “claimed” that they were tortured, but that our clients were subjected to torture, or cruel and inhuman and degrading treatment. The jury found them credible, as did General Taguba when he investigated Abu Ghraib back in 2004.

And, in fact, one of our clients in this case was someone who provided an account of abuse already, back in late 2003. And at that time, General Taguba also found the report by him and other Iraqi detainees credible.

So these are not mere allegations at this point. We have a jury verdict, and the jury awarded each plaintiff $3 million in compensatory damages, and $11 million each in punitive damages against CACI.

And that punitive damages award is saying that it [02:22:00] wasn’t a few rogue employees, but it was a corporation that had responsibilities that it didn’t fulfill. The fact that that punitive damages award was meeting the amount that CACI was paid through their contract at Abu Ghraib, I really think sends a very clear message.

JJ: Finally, and perhaps you’ve answered it, but what are your hopes for the impact of this verdict, and what would you maybe say to other attorneys, frankly, who are working on years-old cases that might never lead to such an outcome?

KATHERINE GALLAGHER: First, on the outcome, we certainly had a big victory, and it was a real validation of our clients, of what was done to them, and of their quest for justice. So that, again, I am very grateful for.

We will be facing an appeal; CACI has made that clear. [02:23:00] So the litigation is not yet over, and our clients have not been given the monetary compensation. But, indeed, there already has been a real recognition for them by the jury, which mattered a lot, I have to say. It mattered a great deal to them, to know that they were heard and that they were believed.

In terms of the bigger picture of what this means, I do think that these cases are important. They may be difficult and, frankly, they also may be lost, but raising the challenges, and bringing the facts to the forefront, and putting harm with proper labels, so that those pictures Abu Ghraib are understood as torture, which means causing severe physical or mental harm, intentionally. And that is what happened to our plaintiffs.

CACI was part of a [02:24:00] conspiracy to do that to our plaintiffs. And, indeed, they may not have been the ones to literally shackle our plaintiffs, but they gave instructions and encouragement to have our plaintiffs so mistreated and so harmed.

And I think that that message of challenging injustice, and for our clients to try and regain some of their agency, some of their dignity, it’s important. And I’m gratified that in this case it ended in a victory, but I still think it’s worth bringing cases, even if that’s not the outcome.

SECTION D: NOW WHAT?

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally, Section D- Now What?

Ceasefire in Gaza w Akbar Shahid Ahmed Part 3 - Long Reads - Air Date 1-25-25

DANIEL FINN - HOST, LONG READS: So we're now in a position where Trump has taken office as president and rolled out his team and his policy agenda for both domestic and foreign policy at the time that we're speaking.

Understandably, there's a great deal of focus and a great deal of concern about [02:25:00] the executive orders that he's issuing in relation to U. S. domestic policy from immigration and other issues of that kind. But what have we learned so far that can clarify what we might have understood at the time of the presidential election?

about what the administration is going to do, its appointments, its policy declarations, what should we expect in relation to Gaza, in relation to Israel, and the wider Middle East. And is there a greater likelihood or prospect of war with Iran, which of course has been a matter of great speculation over the last year, or perhaps further steps towards confrontation that would fall short of outright war?

AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: I think what we've already seen by this first week of the Trump administration is that the battle lines among Trump's team are quite clear, right? So Steve Whitkoff, who [02:26:00] has been his mediator and kind of Middle East special envoy working on this Israel Hamas deal, is already engaged in talking about phase two of the deal and, and trying to craft that using his long standing relationships with Qatar in particular.

But He's already being attacked for it and he's already being seen by some hardline Israel supporters as a stooge of Qatar, by extension, a stooge of Hamas. These narratives are out there and often come from hawkish voices and from, you know, folks who just don't see a value in negotiation and see the world more in a zero sum, we must crush our enemies kind of view.

So that's already coming and The nicer face of that, right, the more finessed face of that is Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, and Mike Huckabee, to an extent, the U. S. Ambassador to Israel. These are figures who, while they're not overwhelmingly, you know, they're not going to be [02:27:00] spreading conspiracy theories, although in the Trump administration there's actually a high likelihood of that always, they're not going to be engaging in mud fights, but they do have very clear, hardline, hawkish Pro Israel views, hardline views on how to deal with Palestinians, and deep skepticism of any degree of autonomy.

Or Palestinian rights, and I think that that's going to be a kind of internal push pull. I think, to the extent to which Rubio keeps his job, which is very much in question in Washington foreign policy circles, he will be a player in this. I think Netanyahu will certainly be trying to push Trump in a more bellicose direction.

And that does extend to Iran. So Iran

CLIP: today, let

AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: me

DANIEL FINN - HOST, LONG READS: During his confirmation hearing, Marco Rubio argued that Iran had been greatly weakened over the past year.

CLIP: Iran and that regime is at its weakest point in recent memory, maybe ever. Their air defenses have been badly damaged. [02:28:00] Their Shia crescent that they were trying to create has been badly damaged.

In Lebanon, in Syria, where they've been basically forced and driven out. Their economy is in shambles. They now are on some days having 6, 8, 12, 9 hour blackouts. They are on the verge of potentially of not having done so already, having to pull back on the energy subsidies that they provide people in that country that are incredibly popular and it would be unpopular to reverse.

So they're in a lot of trouble. What cannot be allowed under any circumstances is a nuclear armed Iran. What cannot be allowed under any circumstances is an Iran and an Iranian regime that has the resources and the capability to restart and continue their sponsorship of terrorism. And what cannot be allowed under any circumstances is an Iran with a military capability of threatening and destabilizing its neighbors and potentially reaching the homeland as well, both kinetically and directly, and also through their surrogate groups who have long planned contingencies for attacks.

I think depending

AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: on how, how the [02:29:00] question mark over the Gaza ceasefire goes, that'll tell us a lot about the direction of Trump's Iran policy. You've heard from the Iranian side a willingness to get back to negotiations with the U. S. to an extent, and that's also being framed. In a kind of standard show of bluster, but rooted to a degree, as by the Iranians, as well, we've expanded our nuclear development and our enrichment and our missile capability to an extent it wasn't in the previous Trump administration.

And that's indisputable, right? As Trump turns around and says, wow, Iran is such a big risk, they're closer to a bomb, they're closer to a bomb because Donald Trump. remove the limits on their nuclear capacity. So that's, he's dealing with a self made dilemma. I've been, you know, in the room with the Iranian president when he's come to New York, talking about wanting to cut a deal with the Americans.

The prospect of president Trump was very much already there. I think the desire [02:30:00] is sincere, but what's so often the problem with Trump is, is there an actual system in place to not just craft a deal. But get that deal through Congress where skepticism of Iran, of many forces, frankly, in the Muslim majority world is very, very deep, right?

And it's going to run through the Republican party. It's going to run through some very hardline pro Israel Democrats. It was hard for president Obama to get his deal with Iran through. If Trump does pursue some kind of agreement, I think that'll become a big fight with Congress. And then to your point that there's a real risk that instead we stumble into a war.

I think President Trump wants to pitch himself as being anti war. That was part of even his inauguration speech. He talked about being defined by the wars that the U. S. will not go into. But war is not always a matter of. of strategy, planning, [02:31:00] rational decision making, it can really just be the wrong set of people at the wrong time.

And what we know is that tensions are so inflamed in the region, wariness of the U. S. is so strong and the desire, frankly, among even U. S. aligned regimes in the region, whether it's the Saudis, whether it's the Gulf States, the desire to be mediators or to, to kind of help finesse and calm things down.

It's a little in the beans. I think everyone's kind of holding their breath. So, so the risk of an unintentional conflagration. Expanding from, from any kind of escalation, right? It could be related to the Houthis in Yemen. It could be related to militias in Iraq. Something I think people forget, uh, but we saw, unfortunately, during the Gaza War, um, is the number of U.

S. troops that are posted all over the Middle East, right? And in places where they are vulnerable. You saw three U. S. troops killed. Almost a year ago now, when a pro Iran militia [02:32:00] did target them. Any of those situations could lead to a really violent reaction from President Trump that could upend any hope of a diplomatic pursuit.

And of course, there are many voices who are saying, look, Israel, I was able to go into Lebanon, I didn't get demolished or decimated. In fact, Israel has actually had its first exchange of missiles with Iran in 2024. Maybe the Israelis can go further and the risk is not as high. And the people who kind of have set that expectation and created that impression are the Biden administration.

who were simultaneously saying they don't want to see a regional war. So as we look at the chances of a regional war, that's also higher because of the choices the U. S. has been making even prior to Trump.

Trump's Middle East Plans w Mouin Rabbani Part 3 - Behind the News - Air Date 1-23-25

DOUG HENWOOD - HOST, BEHIND THE NEWS: Finally, um, you alluded to this earlier, but let's talk a bit more about it. Um, Gaza is Iraq. It's not possible to imagine any civilization being reestablished there. So what's ahead?

What are we going to do? Like 2 million people who are essentially homeless.

MOUIN RABBANI: Yes. 2 million people who are essentially [02:33:00] homeless. Israel's initial intention, one, by the way, that was, um, endorsed and embraced by the Biden administration and specifically by the former Secretary of State, uh, Blinken, the initial proposal was to transfer, in other words, to forcibly deport the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip to the Sinai Peninsula, open the border, push them all out, close the gate, problem solved.

Lincoln, in fact, went to the region and met with officials in the Gulf States and in Egypt and proposed this plan. And much to his surprise, Washington's closest Arab allies categorically, uh, rejected it. It has been suggested that the Egyptian strongman, Abdel Fattah el Sisi, was in principle prepared to consider that.

But was met with very strong pushback from other power centers in the Egyptian security establishment. But [02:34:00] my sense is that at least for the foreseeable future, that objective or that plan is no longer on the agenda. It's no longer considered feasible. And I suspect what Israel wants to do now is to create.

Conditions within the Gaza Strip where if you don't have kind of an organized mass departure of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, you will have a situation similar to what you've had, for example, in Syria or in North Africa, where people We'll get into boats or fishing trawlers or rubber dinghies, try to make it to the nearest island or landmass and either make it or drown in the Mediterranean like so many thousands before them.

Having said that, while I generally agree with your statement about the Gaza Strip, certainly in its current form, not being a viable place for human civilization, we do have somewhat of a historical analogy here. And that's the late [02:35:00] 1940s. What I'm pointing to specifically is that the Gaza Strip did not exist before 1948.

You had Gaza city, certainly one of the oldest cities in the world. And during the British mandate of Palestine, you had the district of Gaza, which was very much larger than the current Gaza Strip, but the Gaza Strip itself is a product of the Palestine war of the late 1940s. and particularly of the Nakba, the mass dispossession and expulsion of Palestinians from territory that became the state of Israel.

And overnight, the population of what became the Gaza Strip more than tripled from 80, 000 to, I believe it was 240 or 250, 000. These were all destitute, penniless, uprooted people who often entered the Gaza Strip on foot with only the clothes on their backs or on, on donkey carts. And there are actually very detailed reports at the time from, for example, the Quakers, an [02:36:00] organization that was quite active in the Gaza Strip during the late 1940s and subsequently from, uh, UN, uh, agencies that were there.

So, you had, yes, Gaza's infrastructure was certainly more prepared than it is today, but it was similarly in no way able to absorb three times, uh, the existing population. Yet, as I always say, one should never underestimate the resourcefulness and the persistence of the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip. And we're talking about people here who were under blockade and siege for 17 years, for a prolonged period, were not even able to get fuel into the Gaza Strip to run their vehicles, and found a way to use cooking oil to make their cars run and have Taxi transportation and all the rest of it.

Yes, the challenges are going to be enormous. We don't yet know to what extent they [02:37:00] will be supported either by Arab states or the international community or whether, you know, once, uh, the guns fall silent, um, if people will just, uh, move on to the next crisis, but this is an extraordinarily uh, resourceful people that has managed to build a viable society out of nothing, um, once before, and may well succeed in doing so again, particularly if the underlying political crisis that is now in its eighth decade, and that ultimately explains a crisis that erupted on October 7th of 2023, is also addressed.

DOUG HENWOOD - HOST, BEHIND THE NEWS: That's a big qualification.

MOUIN RABBANI: Yes, I readily,

The Ceasefire in Gaza w Mohammad Alsaafin Part 5 - American Prestige - Air Date 1-19-25

DEREK DAVISON - CO-HOST, AMERICAN PRESTIGE: Uh, but this, the last 15 months have revealed something, I think, very, Ugly about the Western led international order that is not going to be a you're not going to be able to put that toothpaste to use a trite phrase [02:38:00] back in the tube. What are your thoughts on where we go from here in terms of international law and the structures, the rules of the rules based order that supposedly exists?

What what's what's in store for that?

MOHAMMAD ALSAAFIN: Yeah, I. It's, it's ironic that all these structures were built extensively, uh, and, and designed after World War II to stop something, something like this, specifically something like this from happening. And their credibility has been destroyed at the altar of ensuring Israel continues, gets to continue doing the job there.

Um, it is, it is. It's going to be interesting to see what elements of international law and these international systems, um, actually call back some of their credibility. So accountability, I think, will be key. [02:39:00] Um, the international criminal court has arrest warrants out for you. I'd go on Benjamin Netanyahu.

Um, obviously the United States is furiously working and make sure that the court is undermined or sanctioned if it carries out those arrest warrant. Um, it will be interesting to see how many European countries, um, decide that their relationship with the United States and Israel, uh, supersedes, um, their, uh, you know, their belief in international law or any of these systems.

It's something that I have been thinking about. I'm not an expert. And this stuff, but I think it's very clear. You know, when you look at the United Nations Security Council, any credibility had, um, died every time, um, you know, Robert Wood or, uh, Linda Thomas Greenfield raised their hands, defied the entire world and said that the, no, there's no cease firing.

Gaza continue with the bloodshed. Um, I [02:40:00] think, Danny, you might have written more about this. I would be actually really curious to hear your thoughts.

DANIEL BESSNER - CO-HOST, AMERICAN PRESTIGE: I think that the, um, uh, it was never great for the global South when you just look at the history, uh, particularly in Asia, uh, the Asian landmass, Paul Chamberlain in his, I think it's called, um, the Cold War's Killing Fields just shows 70 percent of people who died in Cold War conflicts died in Asia.

And some, I think, Believe that's the exact statistic, but people could look it up for themselves. So it was always pretty bad. I think what, what makes this unique is that Israel is in the global imaginary, more connected to Europe than anywhere else. So it's like the periphery of Europe doing it. And I think like Israel is very much a global northern nation.

Um, and so it really, in that sense. in the, in the core, it's on the periphery of the core, but it's still in the core that something like this is able to go, uh, to occur, [02:41:00] um, I think reveals the hypocrisy at the heart of the system. You know, that it's still founded on the type of colonial violence that defined the 1500s to the, the basically the Holocaust, um, when you're talking about the global North.

And so I think that's why it feels so strange because in some sense, if you know history, you know, it rests on this type of violence, but it hasn't been as present for people who are alive today because most of us weren't alive during World War II. So I think like it really exposes the hypocrisy of the order itself.

And what's different about previous moments when that hypocrisy has been exposed in the Western imagination, mostly during Vietnam, that was the big moment a little bit after in Central America, but not as much. Is that there's actually other gigantic powers, particularly China, that really does reshape things.

There's not a, um, for the mo the 20th century, there was no power challenging that order. So [02:42:00] it'd be very interesting, I think, to see what China does going forward. Uh, I think China has taken a step back to this for a variety of reasons. I think it basically doesn't seek global hegemony. It seeks a regional hegemony.

Uh, but I'm curious to how they're going to use the, uh. exposure of the order's hypocrisy to their end. And that's obviously tangentially related to Gaza and the ceasefire, but I think this could have larger repercussions for international relations more broadly. Um, so I think that's going to be a big shakeout going forward to see what happens.

Or it could be that people just say, we always knew it was bullshit. We didn't care. And honestly, the United States gives us trade agreements and enriches our local elite. So fuck China, which could also happen as well. So we'll just have to see and wait. What's going on.

MOHAMMAD ALSAAFIN: Where do you think, do you think that, um, the U S a soft power has taken a hit?

DANIEL BESSNER - CO-HOST, AMERICAN PRESTIGE: So the way I describe it is that the American century in its initial form had three pillars, culture, politics, and [02:43:00] economy. The culture part has gone away and has gone away over the course of the global war on terror. I don't think that people, people still want to come here because it's better to be in the empire than not.

That's what the right wing always points to. Immigrants want to come here. Yeah, fucking obviously. You want to be the people putting the boot on the neck. You don't want to be the neck. Um, but I don't think that there is this sort of global notion of the United States being a font of democracy, which there really was between the Um, but the, it turns out that you don't actually, the culture is not shock among shocks.

The least important part of that hegemonic project of this American, that I call the American century. It turns out the economy and security are really the Marx and Engels were right, right? Marx wrote about the economy, Engels wrote about the military. Those are still the core forms of power on earth because we haven't yet achieved communism.

That's coming soon. Um, so, uh, we also are in a moment where the sort of the hegemony and the Gramscian sense no longer exists for American empire, but [02:44:00] the pure material power continues to exist. And so that is going to be this issue going forward. Um, I, I mean, I predict that the United States will basically remain in predominance in every region except East Asia.

I think that in the next 10 to 25 years East. The Chinese are going to force the United States out of regional hegemony or region even regional parody, which it arguably has now, but it's going to remain pretty dominant in doing a form of imperial management in Latin America, especially in the Middle East, especially less so Africa.

The U S has always been less concerned with Africa. Uh, and Western Europe will become sort of like the, as it is the little kid decaying brother of the United States. Another large story that we don't really talk about is sort of the decline of Europe in the last 10 years, in a way that very different.

From the two thousands. Um, and I think what, what makes Israel Palestine so resonant as opposed to the particular historical reasons it's resonance. Is it, it it's sort of a fulcrum of the entire world system in a sense. It's where the liminality is [02:45:00] exposed in its most stark form. Um, and I think it, it is, it is going to be key to what comes next.

Credits

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: That's going to be it for today. As always, keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about today's topic or our upcoming topics. We're going to be looking at the big picture perspective on the changing landscape of international politics under a second Trump administration, as well as the shifting landscape of the media as corporations attempt to position themselves to avoid attacks from Trump. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at 202-999-3991. You can now reach us on the privacy-focused messaging app, Signal, at the username BestoftheLeft.01. There's a link in the show notes for that. Or simply email me to [email protected].

The additional sections of the show included clips from American Prestige, The Socialist Program, The ReidOut, Long Reads, Democracy Now!, Revolutionary Left Radio, CounterSpin, and Behind the News. Further [02:46:00] details are in the show notes.

Thanks to everyone for listening. Thanks to Deon Clark and Erin Clayton for their research work for the show and participation in our bonus episodes. Thanks to our transcriptionist quartet, Ken, Brian, Ben and Lara for their volunteer work helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work behind the scenes and her bonus show co-hosting. And thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships. You can join them by signing up today at BestOfTheLeft.Com/Support, through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple Podcasts app. Membership is how you get instant access to our incredibly good and often funny weekly bonus episodes, in addition to there being no ads, and chapter markers in all of our regular episodes, all through your regular podcast player. You'll find that link in the show notes, along with a link to join our Discord community, where you can also continue the discussion. And don't forget to follow us on any new social media platforms you might be joining these days.

So coming to you from far outside the conventional wisdom of Washington, DC, my name is Jay! and this has been the Best of the Left podcast coming to you [02:47:00] twice weekly, thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show from BestOfTheLeft.Com.

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#1686 Temperatures Rising, Tempers Flaring: LA Fires, Climate Emergencies, Conspiracies, and Water Wars (Transcript)

Posted by · January 28, 2025 2:17 PM

Air Date 1/28/2025

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast. The existence of out of control wildfires in Los Angeles amid a rising climate crisis is not confusing or strange. How to deal with such an emergency during our ongoing political and information crisis is a completely different story. For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our top takes in about 50 minutes today includes Democracy Now!, Sustainable Minimalists, Factually, The Bitchuation Rroom, The Keith Boykin Channel, and The Bradcast. Then in the additional deeper dives half of the show, there'll be more in four sections: Section A: Water; Section B: Insurance; Section C: Political Failure, and Section D: Climate.

Untold Stories of L.A. Fires: Incarcerated Firefighters, Black Altadena & Octavia Butler's Warning - Democracy Now! - Air Date 1-13-25

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the community of Altadena, the historically Black community, where Octavia Butler is buried?

SONALI KOLHATKAR: Yeah, she’s buried just a couple of miles from my home. [00:01:00] I’ve visited her grave. Last year, my book club read Parable of the Sower, because her book, you know, was written in the '90s, but it is — it opens in July, I believe, summer 2024. So we sort of read it just a little bit after that. And it is so prescient, because it is a post-apocalyptic Southern California around Los Angeles. Octavia Butler called this area her home. The cemetery she's buried at, Mountain View Cemetery, is just on the Altadena side of the border. I drove by there yesterday. There seemed to be a little bit of damage. But the reports that I’m reading, because I still can’t go into Altadena, are that the cemetery was, by and large, not too damaged.

There’s a lovely, amazing Black-owned bookstore in North Pasadena called Octavia’s Bookshelf, run by Nikki High, a Black resident of Altadena, who has turned her [00:02:00] bookstore into a hub, a local hub, of donations. I interviewed Nikki. She hasn’t even been back home. She thinks her home is standing. And she has just risen up for her community.

And she — I spoke yesterday with Perry Bennett, the owner and proprietor of Perry’s Joint, a beloved institution in North Pasadena, who was telling me about the tight-knit Black community in Altadena and Pasadena. And you’re right, you know, Altadena is home to about — 18% of its population is African American, so a little bit higher than the general country. And, you know, Altadena is a town that was rapidly gentrifying, but the Black community has stayed there for generations. I can count, you know, friends who have lost their family homes. And it’s a very tight-knit community. Perry Bennett was telling me yesterday how everybody knows everybody else. Everybody knows their moms and dads and neighbors.[00:03:00]

I then encountered four young Black women who were giving away, setting up — who had set up a donation hub on someone’s front lawn. And they were incredible women who had grown up in North Pasadena, Altadena. Some of them are now going to college elsewhere, but they had come back. Their families were impacted.

It’s a tight-knit community. It’s a community where people have had the chance to own homes, because they hadn’t been redlined historically. And the people are grieving, wondering if they can rebuild those networks. There’s developers already circling around. You know, predatory capitalism waits for no one. And they are offering people — you know, offering to buy up their property already. And it’s insulting. I mean, the embers haven’t even gone cold. The smoke is still rising, and the developers are circling.

AMY GOODMAN: As Naomi Klein wrote about, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. I wanted [00:04:00] to turn to the science-fiction writer Octavia Butler on Democracy Now! back in 2005. You know, she writes about global warming, about totalitarianism. We spoke — we were one of the last interviews with her before she died and was buried in Altadena. We spoke after the catastrophic Hurricane Katrina.

OCTAVIA BUTLER: I wrote the two Parable books back in the '90s. And they are books about, as I said, what happens because we don't trouble to correct some of the problems that we’re brewing for ourselves right now. Global warming is one of those problems. And I was aware of it back in the ’80s. I was reading books about it. And a lot of people were seeing it as politics, as something very iffy, as something they could ignore because nothing was going to come of it tomorrow.

That [00:05:00] and the fact that I think I was paying a lot of attention to education because a lot of my friends were teachers, and the politics of education was getting scarier, it seemed to me. We were getting to that point where we were thinking more about the building of prisons than of schools and libraries. And I remember while I was working on the novels, my hometown, Pasadena, had a bond issue that they passed to aid libraries, and I was so happy that it passed, because so often these things don’t. And they had closed a lot of branch libraries and were able to reopen them. So, not everybody was going in the wrong direction, but a lot of the country still was. And what I wanted to write was a novel of someone who was coming up with [00:06:00] solutions of a sort.

AMY GOODMAN: Prophetic, the Black famous writer Octavia Butler back in 2005, from Pasadena, buried in Altadena. As she talked about prisons, Sonali, what about the incarcerated firefighters? We went out to California, interviewed them years ago, are now making, what, between $5 and $10 — not an hour, but a day — as they risk their lives, like other firefighters, to fight these blazes.

SONALI KOLHATKAR: Yes, yeah. And, you know, there’s not very many media outlets that are bringing up that aspect of the firefighting effort in Eaton Canyon and Palisades and all of the fires that have broken out. It is, to me, such a — so indicative of the ways in which our spending priorities are [00:07:00] so skewed. Yes, it’s true that our fire departments are severely understaffed. So, instead of us training more non-incarcerated people or, for that matter, frankly, allowing incarcerated people to simply not be incarcerated so they can actually be active and, you know, fulfilling members — fulfilled members of our society, we turn to prison labor. And prison labor is used in so many different aspects of our capitalist society. Firefighting is one of them. I personally haven’t had the chance to interact with any of the firefighters here, because they’re in the thick of it, in the throes of fighting the fires. But, to me, this is why I talk about how it’s important for us to start veering away from policing and prisons and into keeping us really safe. Incarcerated firefighters are trying to keep us safe, but they themselves are part of the [00:08:00] architecture of violence, and they are the victims of the architecture of violence, as well.

In my new book, Talking About Abolition: A Police-Free World Is Possible, I speak with 12 abolitionists who talk about these very issues, about how we need to start funding the things that truly keep us safe. The climate, right? One of the people I interview is Leah Penniman, who works on food justice issues; Melina Abdullah, who talks about participatory budgeting; the great Gina Dent, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Dylan Rodríguez, longtime abolitionists who talk about the importance of pulling money out of policing and the architectures of death making and into the things that keep us safe; Robin D. G. Kelley, who wrote the foreword to the book, who’s been on Democracy Now! many times. You know, there are people who have been thinking for so long and strategically about — primarily Black leaders and activists, who I interview in the book, who have been thinking about how we start applying an abolitionist [00:09:00] framework to our economy, to our society. And in such a framework, in such a world, we would not only be climate resilient, we would not only not have incarceration at the mass level that we do now, we would have less crime, we would have fewer fires, because we would have dealt with the climate crisis, and we would have more resilient homes, and we would have equity along racial lines. This is the world that we need to manifest and make happen and actually fight for, rather than the apocalyptic promise of a racial capitalism and policing and prisons, which is what we’re living in right now.

HEADLINES: Water Wars - Sustainable Minimalists - Air Date 12-14-23

STEPHANIE SEFERIAN - HOST, SUSTAINABLE MINIMALISTS: Let's pretend it's 1850. Okay. You live in 1850 and you hear something about gold happening in California, so you make your way west. You find yourself in California. It's gorgeous. It's pristine. Very few people around and you stumble upon a lake. If it's 1850 and you got to that lake in California first, that [00:10:00] lake was yours. And that's because in California, water rights have been granted on a seniority basis.

Whoever gets there first, gets the water. This way of doing things, it stretched back to the gold rush, when California was unchartered territory. Climate change wasn't a thing. So that lake in 1850, it's yours. Now let's fast forward . Your descendants, your great great, maybe even great grandchildren, are still living on the land that you found.

They're enjoying the bounty that is that lake. Well, these days in California, California is starting to see water wars. America depends heavily on California for many beloved products, nuts, grapes, milk, lettuce, carrots. I could go on and on. And it's the water that sustains the job, sustains the livelihoods, creates the crops, that fuels [00:11:00] the state's economy. And yet, in no state in the United States does rainfall vary more each year. Rainfall swings between deluge and drought quite wildly. A New York Times analysis found that decades of unrestricted pumping has left many aquifers in California in severe decline. Add on top of that climate change, which is deepening the strains on the state's rivers, which are essential to cities and farms alike.

In dry years, less snow is piling up in the mountains to feed them. And more of what does flow down river ends up evaporating. It's soaking into the parched topsoil, or it's being pulled into the ground as farmers are over pumping the underground aquifers. And so enter water disputes and water wars. In the north, regulators are considering [00:12:00] stopping supplies to cattle ranchers who have been using too much water and have worsened the collapse of salmon populations.

In the Central Valley, which, by the way, is home to some of America's most productive cropland, officials are taking a hard look at water rights, those water rights that date back to the 1850s. They're asking farmers to provide historical records to back up their claims that they own what they say they own.

And in one area, owners of carrot fields are suing every other landowner in the area in hopes of making their neighbors share more of the burden of reducing water use. The case goes to trial next month. So the water table has gone down. It just keeps going down. And so the big question here is who owns the water? When water is essential to life, yes, but also when water is unpredictable and is doled out [00:13:00] inequitably.

In the Central Valley's enormous southern half, researchers estimate that more than half a million acres of farmland may need to be taken out of cultivation by the year 2040 to stabilize the region's aquifers. Yes, holy moly. I wanted to cover this story today because California is in the beginning stages of going through something that we're all going to have to contend with as the effects of climate change worsen. And that of course is the loss of something essential to life that we just assumed we'd always have readily available to us.

Climate Scientist Debunks L.A. Wildfire Myths with Dr. Daniel Swain - Factually! with Adam Conover - Air Date 1-19-25

ADAM CONOVER - HOST, FACTUALLY!: You're imagining a slow moving fire, you know, fire breaks and we contained it, like we've seen for many years in Southern California. You're not imagining a large area of the city that is, literally, there is a storm of fire happening. You have high winds. You have these embers blowing everywhere. Everything is-

DR. DANIEL SWAIN: A literal firestorm.

ADAM CONOVER - HOST, FACTUALLY!: -almost catching on fire simultaneously. How would you fight such a thing?

DR. DANIEL SWAIN: Yeah, I mean, it really, I do [00:14:00] think it's helpful to think of it of a blizzard of embers. Literally a blizzard of embers. And so that's one piece is the conditions on the ground were almost unbelievably extreme. And this was also true to a slightly lesser extent on the Palisades fire. It's the same story that wind gusts were just 10 or 20 mile an hour lower. But really, when you're still talking about 60 or 70 mile an hour winds, that's not much, that's really not much of a relief. And then there's a couple of other hard realities. One is that generally speaking, once a wildfire starts to move into a populated urban area and starts burning structure to structure, once the first two or three structures ignite, then it's kind of off to the races. This is something that wildland and urban firefighters have described.

Once you really try and keep it out of the structures, because obviously you don't want structures to burn in the first place, but also because once one or two of them go up, now it's an entirely different type of fire. Because structures [00:15:00] have much denser fuel in them and they tend to burn much longer. So a tree goes up, it, burns quickly and hot, but it might be completely done in a minute or two and then just smoldering thereafter. But a house, or a commercial structure that catches on fire and becomes completely engulfed, it's going to burn for hours and it's going to continuously emit thousands, millions of embers for that entire period that it's burning.

And so each of those structures becomes a source for many new potential fires. And you can see how this is a classic sort of exponential growth, self-reinforcing vicious feedback problem. Once you see five, ten houses on fire, now you have these gigantic columns of millions of embers now blowing downwind. And now the next round of- the next block of houses catches. Now you have twice as many sources and quickly this balloons. So once it gets into the urban interface and this environment, it actually gets more difficult to [00:16:00] fight than if it were just a pure vegetation fire.

And because now, you know, think of how many fire trucks show up if someone is- just one structure is on fire ordinarily. It's not one, it's not two, these days in LA, you might see five or ten apparatus outside one burning building under normal circumstances. And that's because that's what it takes to effectively and safely extinguish a fire like that. But you don't have those sorts of resources once you start to have dozens, let alone hundreds, let alone thousands of structures burning. I mean, you would need, I mean, imagine we're talking about the total structure loss here being over 10,000. If you needed ten fire apparatus, even five, let's just be conservative five fire apparatus at those- at each structure to mitigate it.

I mean, are there 50,000 fire engines available? No, I mean, that's just an impossibility. And so you can see how quickly once the conditions are this extreme, and once it gets into the urban [00:17:00] environment, there is a limit to what can actually be achieved in terms of firefighting. And in that context, it's opportunistic, you know, you have firefighters that are doing strategic patrols and sometimes doing what's known as fire front following. So they try and follow, sort of find where the lead edge of the fire is to the extent that there is one, and in this case, that was challenging because there were just so many spot fires, but they say- they drive down the street in the truck and say, 'okay, that house is on fire. That's already fully engulfed. Forget it. There's nothing we can do under these circumstances. We're going to move on. That house is not on fire. It looks like it has decent defensible space. They don't have trees overhanging the roof. They have a front yard that doesn't have a bunch of bushes in it. So we're going to make a stand here. We're going to park. We're going to try and protect the structure.'

Sometimes that's successful. Sometimes it's not. And sometimes it catches despite their best efforts. And at that point, once these structures catch they say, 'okay, we don't have time to really try and extinguish it, so we're moving on.' [00:18:00] And so this is why people get upset. They're quote unquote, "letting the structures burn," but really there isn't practically any choice.

ADAM CONOVER - HOST, FACTUALLY!: They're doing triage. They're doing triage.

DR. DANIEL SWAIN: It's literally triage. It's a triage situation. And sometimes it gets so bad that they don't even do that. They don't even really- there's no effort to protect structures as occurred in some cases during these events, because then the goal, the primary goal, of course, is to save people's lives and physically remove them from the situation where their life is at risk. And that becomes the priority. If you can't do both, you can't protect structures and save people's lives, which one of course, are you going to choose? Is you're going to choose to try and get people out. And that's also what happened. And frankly, one of the reasons why the loss of life probably isn't in the triple digits, which it very well could have been in the hundreds given, given the extremity and it's toll is still rising, but it looks like it will likely be in the dozens rather than the hundreds. And that's awful. And it's also [00:19:00] much less catastrophic even than it could have been, which is a truly sobering thought, I think. Given how bad the reality on the ground actually is.

ADAM CONOVER - HOST, FACTUALLY!: Yes. And I think it's a real blessing and something that we need to be talking about more, how effective the evacuation was that Altadena, I believe 20,000 to 40,000 people in Altadena. I don't recall how many in the Palisades. But the fact that so far the total deaths are, you know, in the dozens or around there as opposed to in the hundreds or thousands, that you did not have, I think, as you discussed in one of your live streams, you did not have such a choke to exit that people burned alive in their cars, for example, we didn't have that sort of horror.

DR. DANIEL SWAIN: And that has happened before in California and more recently in other fires, including the catastrophic fire on Maui in Lahaina, it's happened in Southern Europe, it's happened in Australia. So it is a real risk during these events. And it did come pretty close to [00:20:00] happening in the early moments of the Palisades fire on Sunset Boulevard, of all places, where there was that traffic jam of several hundred cars, people just stuck in gridlock because people had crashed into each other.

There were a lot of people trying to leave at once. It was a scene out of a, it was a scene out of a Hollywood movie, pretty literally. The flames were coming down the canyon, cars were catching on fire. The fire trucks couldn't get through, of course, because people were using both sides of the street to try and leave. And then they crashed into- I mean, it was just this disaster. But, you know, because of the personnel who were there, the fire and the law enforcement, they were able to tell people like, look, you kind of just got to get out of your car and run. Run downhill towards the ocean. And people did that. And it sounds like almost everybody, if not everyone who was in that traffic jam ultimately survived.

And the dramatic footage after was of the L. A. County fire bulldozers bulldozing their way through the Teslas and the Mercedes and the Bentleys in [00:21:00] Pacific Palisades to get people out first, and then to send the firefighting vehicles back up to the upper Palisades to try and actually fight the fire. But it's another example of, you know, triage, right? You do what you've got to do to save people's lives first, and then you deal with the other problems.

But also, you know, it was a near miss. I mean, that actually could have been a burn over and it wasn't ultimately. And it's a good thing that it wasn't, but the fire and Altadena, the Eaton fire was, was potentially even riskier in that sense, there are more roads to get out. There are more routes of egress, on the plus side. On the very minus side, it was in the middle of the night. It was dark. It was not a daytime fire. The power was already out in most of the area because of the damage from these strong winds. So telecommunications were not always functioning well. A lot of people found out about the fire because they smelled smoke or looked out the window and saw a wall of flames.

And yet, despite all this, [00:22:00] the vast majority of people in the areas that burned did make it out in the end. And so that's- I do think that's a relative success story. Compared to what could have happened.

Wildfire Conspiracies And Reinvigorating Black Male Voters with Mondale Robinson & Trae Crowder (Ep 263) Part 1- The Bitchuation Room - Air Date 1-15-25

FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: The LA wildfires, specifically in the Palisades and over on the east side in Altadena, the Eaton fire, continue to rage. not fully contained. Firefighters, including prisoners, are out there battling, these fires and the real theme, Trey, has been it can't be climate change. TtThat'seen the theme more nationally. It must be DEI, given that there is a female mayor who is Black, as well as a female fire chief, who is a lesbian. It must be DEI. It must be some kind of water management [00:23:00] from a rare fish species that Gavin Newsom tried to protect and somehow diverted water from LA in order to protect fish. It must be, literally anything, but specifically it's got to be arsonists. This is what its got to be.

Now, before we get into all the theories of what the right is saying, Marjorie Green, for example, is saying that, why don't they use their weather machine?

TREY CROWDER: Yeah, we have that weather... we do have that weather machine just collecting dust in storage down there out in Nevada, I think is where we parked it.

FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: Yes, we did.

TREY CROWDER: A lot of open space out there. Yeah, you'd think they would call that in, just gin up one, you know, just a small hurricane with some water. I guess it might be a typhoon in the Pacific. Either way, do something and...

FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: We need a high speed rail to actually send that over back to us, which is another conspiracy theory that Newsom is clearing the area for high speed rails. [00:24:00] This is, like people are truly circulating these memes.

TREY CROWDER: Well, a high speed rail would be awesome, so I know that that's never happening. Now, I wouldn't want people's homes burned down for it, because I'm not a lunatic.

FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: Yeah, except for James Woods. Like, if James Woods home, which actually didn't burn down, but if you had to take out James Woods home to build a high speed rail, I say do it.

TREY CROWDER: Yeah, that's a sacrifice I'd be willing to make as well, but yeah, it's been silly. Like you said, the arson thing, I think the thing was driving me crazy about that the whole time because at first, because we had the news on in the house for days straight last week. Nothing but the news. And for a while, they were like, they were reporting on the news that 1 of the fires had been started by a person, right?, who had been arrested by his neighbors, whatever, citizens arrest. And so people are talking about, Arson! Can you believe this? But the whole time I was like, okay, but even if any of them were started by arsonists or whatever, it doesn't matter because it wouldn't have worked if it had not been for the hurricane force [00:25:00] winds that were whipping around in what's supposed to be the rainy season. The fact that it did as much damage as it did is still because of climate reasons, it's still because of the extreme weather conditions, even if someone, a person, started...

FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: Even if it was a trans person who didn't put out their cigarette, you know what i'm saying?

TREY CROWDER: Yeah right. That's not what happened, but even if it was it still is a climate change thing even in that scenario, so i've just never understood the whole like, it's just a really insidious...

FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: no, no, I think that's a really... well gee, I wonder I mean I wonder why right it's because we cannot wrap our minds around the fact that we're having periods down here in southern California, we'll just explain how it's all working: Extreme rain, so like a year ago we had tons of rain. The ground can't absorb it all. And then we have periods of extreme drought, no rain in nine months, but that other rain made the brush go real, real high, [00:26:00] but then it all dried out. And so when the 100 mile per hour winds that happen every single year. But this year was especially intense when they come through, you know, what is the first thing that gets knocked down is fucking power lines. That's what's doing it. It's down, it's the story of all of California. Guess what? Culprit was wind and power lines. It's very easy to down a power line with 100 force, hurricane gale force winds.

So, that's the culprit. But of course, we can't like, nobody likes the conspiracy that is right in front of your face. We want to be like, nah. Uh, uh. I want the one that takes me a while to figure out, I want the one that impugns a homeless person or a mentally ill person.

But so this is Hayes Davenport who has a great sub stack about Los Angeles. Was sort of [00:27:00] collecting specifically celebrities that were like, no, it's an arsonist. Chris Brown official, "someone starting these fires. Shit, don't add up. [eyeballs]". Henry Winkler, of all people, The Fonz: "there is an arsonist here in LA. May you be beaten unrecognizable. The pain you have caused". Seven [inaudible] views. Then, this is my favorite, Trey, this is insane. Motherfuckers are finding pages of books, because people's homes are burning down and books are burning, and they're saying that the book pages that are falling on their lawns are an arsonist's calling card.

TREY CROWDER: Like he's the Joker or something, like a Batman movie?

FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: Yes! "My friend is saying it's an arsonist's calling card. That's interesting. Someone else found this table of contents page in a park. How does that add up?" Someone found another page of the same book. Gee, I wonder maybe we live in the [00:28:00] same fucking neighborhood and there's crazy winds blowing around people's possessions.

TREY CROWDER: Yeah. And books be burning and stuff when there's fire. That's what I always heard. Yeah, I don't know. Again, you always have, like, there will be, it's just like the looting too, which is, separate from the arson thing, but, they want to make a big deal out of that also because it's like, Democrat ran cities in blue states are crime ridden hell holes. So, obviously looting is run rampant, but I've read earlier that since the fire started, they had charged 9 people with looting, 9 people in a city of millions. But it's like, I guarantee you they've charged more people with DUI in that same timeframe, probably, but nobody's talking about like a rampage of drunk driving caused by any of these Democratic shortcomings or whatever. But you, there will always be people doing stuff they shouldn't do. And they're probably, there's always going to be crazy people. There's always going to be people doing bad things, including, whatever, even if they're walking around with blow torches and that type of thing, but it [00:29:00] doesn't. have anything to do with the larger problems that were at hand here last week.

FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: Well, 100%. I mean even the funding that wasn't, that was, denied to the LAFD would not have been enough to stop these because you couldn't even put planes in the air. I just want to say there was no arsonist. None have been found. This fire, the Kenneth fire, which tomorrow I might subject everyone to some Whitney Cummings videos. But the Kenneth fire where comedian Whitney Cummings was like, I'm going to go find this person. This guy apparently was detained by residents, as I think Trey alluded to just straight vigilantism, detained by residents saying he was like lighting a fire. They held him, they questioned him and they let him go because they couldn't find anything that said that he was actually linked to starting the wildfires. So, he's gone. L et's read a little bit of this. " [00:30:00] But the allegation the man started the fire has been determined to be unfounded, officials said". Now here's what I think everyone needs to understand. How can a fire that is in one place, like one mountain top, how can it break out into the other mountain top over there? It must be an arsonist. No, no, no, no, no. Here's what happens. So little piece of big fire gets into the air, whipped by the 60 to 100 miles an hour wind over to other forest and over to other hill. It's just embers, you fucking idiots. That's what these do. I was outside that morning, sorry real quick, I was outside that morning on Tuesday, this was a week ago exactly, and I went outside and I was like, oh shit, I don't know if I can take my daughter to daycare. I usually walk her there, but the wind was like, so strong, I was like, I was afraid it was gonna blow me over. Then I go out like 10 minutes later and it was fine. I was like, oh, [00:31:00] okay.

TREY CROWDER: Oh, they got even wilder where we're at that night. But that's what a lot of these people that live in LA, like celebrities that are in LA spreading this stuff, whatever. It's like, have you been in LA? Were you in LA while it was happening? Because if you were, you could feel the wind. I just can't get past the wind part. Like it just, it's not surprising or hard to understand. Like it makes sense what happened, especially if you were here. I just can't, I can't imagine being here and personally experiencing those winds, which were insane. I've lived here for eight years and I haven't felt winds like that. And not that consistently either. And feel it personally experiencing that and still just being like something ain't adding up. This don't seem right that these fires are spreading. It's like it does add up. It all adds completely, totally up. Like I don't, that's what I mean, man. When I was bitching earlier up top about people, just like, everything's got to be a conspiracy now. Cause I don't know. Cause it makes people feel smart or what? I don't know, [00:32:00] but it's just, it drives me crazy.

The Politics of Fire - The Keith Boykins Channel - Air Date 1-12-25

KEITH BOYKINS - HOST, THE KEITH BOYKINS CHANNEL: This week's media narrative on the L. A. fires has been driven by race, class, power, and privilege. It's a tale of two fires, the Palisades fire on the west side of L. A. County with a wealthy, overwhelmingly White population, inclusion, diversity, equity, and the Eaton fire on the east side of L. A. county with a diverse, multiracial population and a historic Black community.

Both fires are still raging this weekend, but only one is creating a national political debate, and you can guess which one it is. It begins with the Palisades fire on the west side L. A. Fire Chief Kristen Crowley, who was appointed nine months before Karen Bass became mayor, told CNN's Jake Tapper this week,

KRISTEN CROWLEY: The 17 million budget cut did and has and will continue to severely impact our ability to repair our apparatus.

KEITH BOYKINS - HOST, THE KEITH BOYKINS CHANNEL: This comment played right into conservatives hands, and they quickly seized on the fire chief's remarks to attack L. A. Mayor Karen Bass. [00:33:00] But the truth is that an additional 17 million in the fire department's 800 million budget would not have stopped the Palisades fire. How do we know?

KRISTEN CROWLEY: And even with an additional hundred engines, I tell you, we were not going to catch that fire.

KEITH BOYKINS - HOST, THE KEITH BOYKINS CHANNEL: L. A. County Fire Chief Anthony Moroney made a similar point about the issue of water pressure in the fire hydrants.

ANTHONY MARONI: And the water system really isn't designed for a large scale, ongoing fire fight like the one that we just experienced here in Los Angeles County.

KEITH BOYKINS - HOST, THE KEITH BOYKINS CHANNEL: In fact, CNN interviewed more than a dozen experts. And they said that no fire hydrants would have been able to battle fires of the magnitude of those in LA this week, particularly when air resources such as helicopters and fixed wing aircraft were grounded due to the wind. "I don't know a water system in the world that is prepared for this type of event", said one expert. How else do we know? Because the Palisades fire started in the City of Los Angeles, but the Eaton fire broke out on the same day in Altadena outside the City of LA but [00:34:00] still in LA County.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has no jurisdiction over the Eaton fire, but it's still burning. So why hasn't LA County been able to contain its fires, with fully functioning fire hydrants, no reported budget cuts, no Black woman mayor, and no lesbian fire chief. That's because it wasn't budget cuts, fire hydrants, lack of water, protecting an endangered fish, a traveling mayor, DEI, woke policies, or any other right wing explanations that caused these fires to spread so rapidly.

It was Mother Nature. As Liz Corque Lasagna explains, "shifting the blame to the mayor diverts our attention away from the real issues of urban planning: planning, budget realities, climate change, and our addiction to fossil fuels". But despite a withering week of attacks on the mayor and the fire chief, Democrats had no clear message to the public to respond to the accusations. It took until Saturday morning before they finally cleared things out.

KRISTEN CROWLEY: That Mayor Bass, Chief McDonald, and I are in lockstep together.

KEITH BOYKINS - HOST, THE KEITH BOYKINS CHANNEL: But as conservatives [00:35:00] prepare to take over the entire federal government this month and launch their long planned assault on diversity, equity, inclusion, and the truth, the left has to more far more quickly to insert truth and facts into the 24/7 news cycle before the right pre programs people's minds. It's time to adapt to the new reality where lies spread faster than wildfires.

Fires, Liars, and Oligarchy Rising; Garland nixes execution drug - The Bradcast - Air Date 1-16-25

BRAD FRIEDMAN - HOST, THE BRADCAST: Republicans are hoping to use this disaster, these tragedies, for their own political agenda because, well, I guess they hate California and the fact that there are so many Democrats in control of government out here, producing a budget surplus, by the way, this year, at least until these massive fires.

But here, for example, is the horrible human being known as Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican from Alabama, on the far right Newsmax outlet this week.

NEWSMAX: Senator, why should other states be bailing out California for choosing the wrong people to run their state?

SENATOR TOMMY TUBERVILLE: We shouldn't be. They got 40 [00:36:00] million people in that state and they voting these imbeciles in office, and they continue to do it. They are just overwhelmed by these inner city woke policies with the people that vote for them. And I don't mind sending them some money. But unless they show that they're going to change their ways and get back to building dams and storing water, doing the maintenance with the brush and the trees and everything that everybody else does in the country and they refuse to do it, they don't deserve anything, to be honest with you.

BRAD FRIEDMAN - HOST, THE BRADCAST: 'They don't deserve anything'.

DESI DOYEN: Those folks in the inner city.

BRAD FRIEDMAN - HOST, THE BRADCAST: Yes, who've lost their house. In the inner city. Those imbeciles out here in California. Tommy Tuberville from Alabama, who knows a little something about electing imbeciles, I guess. But I hope he doesn't have any hurricanes that wipe out his constituents this year in Alabama. I guess the federal [00:37:00] government would have to attach some strings to the aid that we give to them.

I don't know, maybe if they stopped drilling for so much climate polluting oil or something, they wouldn't get hit by so many hurricanes, but who cares? I guess they keep electing imbeciles out there in Alabama, like Tommy Tuberville. And then there are guys like Republican Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas on Fox News.

STEWART VARNEY: Do you believe there should be conditions on federal aid for California? Strings? Should they be attached?

SENATOR ROGER MARSHALL: Yes, Stew, well, absolutely. We do need strings attached. We need accountability. We need to make sure that these monies, and they're talking about 150 billion dollars, that they're invested in the right place. We've seen California mismanage their forests and mismanaed their water. 95 percent of the rainfall in California ends up in the ocean. So you absolutely we need some strings.

STEWART VARNEY: So what kind of strings? I mean, should President Trump, should he say, Look, California, you made a mess of it last time, [00:38:00] especially with these climate rules. Repeal them, or you don't get any money. Would you go that far?

SENATOR ROGER MARSHALL: Yeah, absolutely. Again, I think we need to say here's the guardrails where the money can be invested in. Is it managing your forests? Is it more water retention? What do we need to do with the homes as well? But we need a long term solution or we're going to be right back here where we were before.

BRAD FRIEDMAN - HOST, THE BRADCAST: Alright, 95 percent of rainfall ends up in the ocean?

DESI DOYEN: No.

BRAD FRIEDMAN - HOST, THE BRADCAST: And by the way, we haven't had any rainfall for about a year. Nonetheless, our reservoirs are full anyway, because we're pretty good at water management out here. But gosh, I hope that there are no tornadoes wiping out entire communities in Roger Marshall's Kansas this year, or else we'd have to, oh, I don't know, attach some conditions to any federal aid that we gave to people who lost their houses and their families and everything that they own. Their entire livelihoods.

As you know, we live [00:39:00] in Los Angeles ourselves, not far from the horrific fires that have displaced tens of thousands of Californians for no fault of their own. In fact, we saw our backyard patio gazebo crushed by a huge flying limb last week amid the hurricane level wind gusts that luckily did not kill one of us.

Two nights later, we were forced to evacuate with about 20 minutes notice when those winds had kicked up a huge fire in a canyon, a canyon with almost zero trees or brush in it to be swept by the way. About three blocks, about three blocks away from here. And then luckily the winds calmed down a bit, even if I didn't, clearly haven't, and airborne firefighters were able to get into the air and knock down that fire before Hollywood, where we live, became the next Pacific Palisades.

Over on Daily Kos last night, a fellow Los Angelino [00:40:00] named Phil Varn put it well in a short piece, headlined, "I was there. I know what caused the Los Angeles firestorms". And frankly, I couldn't have said it any better myself. So I want to read from a Phil Varn's piece.

He writes, "My family lives in northern Santa Monica, adjacent to the Palisades fire. We had to evacuate for a couple of nights, but our home now, thankfully, our neighborhood was spared. A couple of observations", he writes, "Republicans and the lazy news media will gaslight us with stories of what went wrong and who's to blame in order to distract us from the real cause of this firestorm: climate change. Fires like this are exactly what scientists warned us would happen if we didn't get serious about climate change. That should be the story. And any other story is a purposeful distraction. The fossil fuel industry is to blame for the Palisades fires. [00:41:00] Everyone else, from firefighters to police to local and state politicians, did their jobs. Los Angeles has a Black female mayor who was visiting Africa at the time. That's catnip for a racist GOP. The winds that came through the Palisades were epic, and of such intensity that putting out a fire would be impossible. Embers blew for blocks and started new fires wherever they landed. In those winds, there was no technology or mayor that could have stopped it. We haven't had any rain this season, zero. Everything is dry. Neither the Los Angeles mayor nor California governor control the water content of our foliage. City water systems are not designed to address entire neighborhoods catching fire at the same time. Water systems are designed to fight house fires, or worst case, a fire that engulfs an entire block. This fire engulfed a [00:42:00] city. The people who complain the loudest that the city didn't provide enough resources to adequately fight the fires are the same ones who want to cut taxes for the rich and starve government of resources. There's a good chance there will be no federal aid coming to California", he writes, "to help rebuild because the GOP and Trump will hold such aid hostage. The state needs to have a plan B for now, for how it will cope without federal dollars, perhaps by confiscating the federal taxes that Californians pay to Washington to subsidize red states".

Yeah, red states like, I don't know, Tommy Tubervilles. Sounds good to me. In case you didn't know, California pays five times more into the federal government than we receive back from the federal government. So, when I hear these Republicans from other states talking about conditioning [00:43:00] disaster aid, or something other than that they want to see changed in California politics, frankly, it first makes me want to punch them in the face. And second, frankly, it makes me want to secede from the goddamn union. If we did, by the way, California would be the fifth largest nation, the fifth largest economy, the fifth largest GDP in the world. So please go straight to Hell, people like Tommy Tuberville and Kansas's Roger Marshall and all of you losers from red states that have been sucking on California's teat for decades now, sucking up far more in federal government money than you give to it.

You're welcome. We do the opposite here. We give far more than we take back to help you in Alabama and you in Kansas and you in North Carolina or [00:44:00] wherever else climate change that you make worse, has helped to make life a living Hell for your constituents who you do not give a damn about. And yes, we know exactly what happened. We know who to blame for these fires and the fact that there was simply no way to put out these fires in the first couple of days when they broke out without the ability to get firefighters airborne to fight them. It wasn't lack of water. We currently have plenty of water. The reservoirs, as I said, they're all full from the previous two years of torrential rainfall out here. We don't need to sweep the forest floor when the fires are breaking out in the middle of a highly populated urban area.

But you can't put out fires. From the sky, when the winds are gusting to hurricane force levels of a hundred miles per hour as they were when these fires broke out and helicopters cannot even go into the air, [00:45:00] like the one that caused our evacuation last week, about three blocks or so away from us. Thank God it came after the worst of the winds had died down and it was quickly extinguished within hours. The problem is climate change. And of course, losers like Tommy Tuberville and the other Republicans from red states who live on the fossil fuel oligarchy as their own citizens are killed and kept stupid. And all of them can go straight to Hell.

Note from the Editor on why progressive visions are interconnected

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips starting with Democracy Now! discussing the LA fires through the lens of social justice. Sustainable Minimalists looked back on the history of water rights in California. Factually explained the complexities and danger faced by firefighters and extreme urban areas. The Bitchuation Room sorted through some of the conspiracy theories at odds with simple facts about the LA fires. The Keith Boykin Channel waded through the [00:46:00] politics of fighting fires and misinformation at the same time. And The Bradcast gave a firsthand perspective on living through the LA fires while having to endure the politics and cruelty of Republican climate deniers.

And those were just the top takes. There's a lot more in the deeper dive section, but first reminder that the show is produced with the support of our members who get access to bonus episodes and enjoy our shows without ads. To support our work and have those bonus episodes delivered seamlessly to the new members only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show at bestoftheleft.com/support. There's a link in the show notes, through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple podcast app. And as always, if regular membership isn't in the cards for you, shoot me an email requesting a financial hardship membership because we don't let a lack of funds stand in the way of hearing more information.

And we're also trying something new, offering you the opportunity to submit your questions and comments on upcoming topics, not just things you've already heard. Next up, we'll be taking a look at the [00:47:00] complications of the cease fire between Israel and Hamas and some of the other updates on the region. And then following that we'll zoom way out to the changing international dynamics under a second Trump presidency. So, get your comments and questions in for those topics. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at 202-999-3991 . We're also now find-able on the privacy focused messaging app Signal with the handle BestOfTheLeft.01 (there's also a link to that in the show notes) or you can simply email me to [email protected].

Now as for today's topic, I'll start by acknowledging what I have been hearing from many publishers out there, which is that we're dragging a little bit. Here at the show and preparing to give ourselves some grace when we just can't get a new episode out every time we plan to. You know, one small hiccup in the schedule, one deadline only slightly missed one, fascist being [00:48:00] inaugurated, can cascade into production delays. So, we're just deciding to make peace with that rather than fight it and hope that you will have some understanding for us given the circumstances.

Now amid production delays, I also procrastinated a bit on today's comments because I couldn't decide which angle to focus on. There were so many different things I could talk about. And ultimately I decided to give a broad overview on several and recommend some further reading for you.

First up, I don't know why I didn't see this coming in the age of hyper wealth inequality, but of course there are now private firefighting companies. I don't know. Maybe I heard of this before and suppressed it, but here we are. The thing that I thought we had done away with when Benjamin Franklin founded the first community firefighting brigade that would protect all homes and not just the ones who paid the private company. But, you know, here we are again. For more, read "Inside the Complicated Rise of Private Firefighting" from [00:49:00] Fast Company, talking very much about the LA fires. And if you're wondering if those private firefighters get in the way of the official firefighters working to protect everyone, the answer is that well, you know, they try not to. But, yes of course that sometimes happens.

Next up is a positive story, actually, about finally making polluters pay for the impact of climate change from the article in Truthout, "Los Angeles Fires Underscore Activists’ Call: Make Polluters Pay for Disasters". I learned that New York has recently passed the first of its kind legislation. Quoting, it says, " New York governor Kathy Hochul signed the Climate Change Superfund Act (CCSA) into law. Widely acclaimed by environmental advocates, the CCSA is a milestone as the first climate legislation of its kind. It will bring the power of the state to bear on fossil fuel industries mandating a meaningful degree of corporate accountability for the climate crisis". [00:50:00] The idea being, we know that climate disasters are going to cost trillions of dollars. It's time to stop allowing the financial gains to be privatized within the polluting companies while socializing the cost of the damage onto the taxpayers.

Quoting again, it says, "God knows what the fires in California are going to cost, but one thing's for sure: the price will be massive. I would think that, if anything, the wildfires in California would make taxpayers in California acutely more sensitive to the overwhelming financial burden of climate change". And yeah, this is why activists have been saying for decades at the high cost of reversing climate change was going to end up being nothing compared to the unfathomably high cost of doing nothing and living with the consequences.

Okay. So we've touched on the nature of inequality, amid climate chaos, and the potential turn toward corporate accountability and government action in the [00:51:00] face of increasing natural disasters. Now the final story highlights the fundamental core of where we all went wrong in the first place. The headline from the LA times is "The Tongva’s land burned in Eaton fire. But leaders say traditional practices mitigated damage," and the story touches on the Land Back movement, which is putting property ownership back into the hands of native people. As well as the demonstrative difference of what happens when a community implements native principles into how they build and maintain their homes in a way that works with and recognizes the power of nature, as opposed to the opposite. Most prominently, they removed invasive fire-prone eucalyptus trees that they say helped keep the fire manageable.

And of course, this is just a microcosm of the bigger story for people. There are those who believe personally, and then there's the culture more widely to the echoes, the sentiment that [00:52:00] we are here to dominate and bend nature to our will. That has always, and will always result in nature, pushing back just as hard, if not harder, as we do in our efforts to dominate, resulting in unimaginable damage and destruction. Then there are those who recognize that the only way to live sustainably is to work with nature rather than against it, on every conceivable level. Not just by managing the land and cutting some trees, but also getting humanity as a whole to exist within the natural boundaries of the climate and the ecosphere.

Now I'm finally, I just want to point out that in highlighting these three stories, focusing on inequality, government action and native practices. I'm also trying to highlight the fundamental nature of what it's going to take to achieve a better vision for the future. Which is that there is no silver bullet, and we need to be doing lots of things, all at the same [00:53:00] time. As we continue to talk about surviving and mitigating the damage of our current political climate, there's a lot of advice about getting involved, which I completely agree with. And the only thing I want to add to that general sentiment is the recognition that you, as an individual, can't be involved in every solution that needs to happen. In every action that needs to be taken. But you can and should recognize the interconnectedness of all of the movements that need to work both independently and in confederation with each other to achieve the future we want to see. So don't feel like you have to try to be part of everything, you can't. But also don't allow your movements, whatever you get involved with to become too siloed and insular. We need to be interconnected because doing an, all of the above strategy is the only way we're going to get to where we want to go.

SECTION A: WATER

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now we'll continue to dive deeper on four topics. [00:54:00] Next up: Section A - Water. Followed by Section B - Insurance, Section C - Political Failure and Section D - Climate.

Ep19. Water Wars – myth or reality? Part 1 - Disorder - Air Date 1-24-24

JASON PACK - HOST, DISORDER: Could you tell us, how do multinational firms make money out of water?

NAHO MIRUMACHI: So, a lot of the times, the way that these global corporations or big companies, they, for example, if they're in the food and beverage sector, they are literally using land and water that's running through the land to make their crops.

And then that gets turned into a beer, for example, or something into like flour that becomes our pizzas and things like that. But then there are mining companies that provide really important mining things for our clean energy technologies. And so there's a long chain of companies that are invested in the whole process of using water.

And I think that's also connecting to us. So you mentioned governments having the responsibility to better regulate, certainly, but also consumers demanded. We also [00:55:00] are a part of this whole sphere of using water and demanding water. And I think we can also face the mirror towards us and say, what kind of consumer behavior is also driving a lot of these issues.

Unsustainable practices.

ARTHUR SNELL : I wanted to ask actually, is an aspect of this, is it regulatory capture? Because in the UK, it's basically become a sort of media storm, this idea that all of our rivers are flowing with. For want of a better word, flowing with shit. And it feels as if the regulator is unable to regulate these very large firms that run the water in the UK context.

And perhaps that's because the regulator itself is somehow captured by that industry.

NAHO MIRUMACHI: I think the problem is that there's a disconnect between the government, the regulator, the private companies. And also, remember, the private companies are, um, Foreign invested companies. So I think that's where a lot of the malfunctions emerge.

JASON PACK - HOST, DISORDER: And I would assert that the malfunctions emerge because [00:56:00] water is a collective good. And hence what we've seen in the UK for non UK listeners is a private company sells water at X amount, makes a profit, but they're not redoing the pipes and water is being leaking or they're exhausting the system. Then they go bankrupt.

People have made money and when they go bankrupt, the state has to provide water because it's Britain. They're not going to not provide water to the people and the investors in that company have made off with their profit. Am I missing something?

NAHO MIRUMACHI: Well, I think fundamentally, water is a human right, and that has to be crystal clear to the private companies, to the government, to the consumers, that there's an obligation for states to provide clean water, safe water to their citizens.

And citizens also have the right to call for recourse when that human right hasn't been upheld. [00:57:00] Sadly, in many parts of the world, the human right to water and sanitation hasn't been recognized, or it's not necessarily practiced in a way that provides protection to all people. It might be protecting to the rich people who can pay their bills, but not necessarily to people who are off the system, off the water system.

JASON PACK - HOST, DISORDER: And is that right really enshrined in international law, or it's just, uh,

NAHO MIRUMACHI: It's been debated and accepted by the UN, so many governments look up to it. It's part of the Sustainable Development Goal 6, so we do have water as a clear political mandate. But the proof is always in the pudding with implementation.

You can have beautiful prose, you can even enshrine the human right to water in your constitution, but how you actually practice it is another matter, and I think that's where a lot of the challenges are.

ARTHUR SNELL : Could you tell us about the treaties that govern how water should be shared between [00:58:00] states and regions?

Do these treaties work, and are they adequately enforced? Perhaps you could go into a bit more detail there.

NAHO MIRUMACHI: Yeah, so right now, for example, we rely on the UN Water Courses Convention to say how countries should cooperate. If they're going to build a dam, they should let their downstream states know there should be equitable and reasonable use.

But all of these things, like what's equitable, depends on the context, depends on the country, and so the onus is on states. to discuss and negotiate and work that out. What's equitable between US and Mexico might not necessarily be equitable between the Nile states.

ARTHUR SNELL : Typically, in other areas of sort of the interest that certainly, you know, Jason and I have looked at in this podcast in the past, you have this sort of ordering powers and disordering powers.

And, you know, there are countries that seek to drive global cooperation on certain issues, and other countries that appear to have an interest in undermining [00:59:00] cooperation. Do you see that in the context of water diplomacy?

NAHO MIRUMACHI: So the good example would be to look at the Nile. The Nile has been heavily contested, shared by 11 countries, and Ethiopia's building of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam has been highly contested.

Downstream Egypt has been very upset by this. over the way in which Ethiopia has gone ahead and filled their dams and produced electricity. And so in many ways, you could argue that there is disorder there. And then you also have countries like the U. S. that have tried to intervene. And you could ask why on earth would The U.

S. want to intervene in a place like this because it's probably not for water. So there are other motivations for the U. S. to be involved. The African Union has also mediated. And again, you can say, why would the African Union want to be involved? It's because they want to see some sort of regional security in this region.

part of the world, and water as [01:00:00] a result sort of underpins other functions of international relations, other functions of trade, other functions of foreign diplomacy. And so the way I see it is that water is a issues get folded into other aspects of foreign policy. And I think that's where perhaps you see countries who are more active in trying to seek cooperative agreements and others who may be considered less enthusiastic in trying to develop some sort of multilateralism.

There is this UN Water Courses Convention that has been signed by many states, but there have been countries that have not been at all enthusiastic about signing up. And I think this gives you a flavor of how some countries see water in and of itself a political agenda that they want to face on, deal with.

Or, uh, They want to deal with water through other means.

ARTHUR SNELL : I'm glad you brought up the Nile example, because it's, [01:01:00] you know, obviously the, I think, the world's greatest river, and, of course, it's a classic transboundary river basin, which is an area worth using. Could you say a bit about these transboundary rivers, which, of course, are hugely significant almost on every continent, and, and the scale and significance of those in global water politics and water diplomacy?

Sure.

NAHO MIRUMACHI: Yeah, so there are many of these transboundary rivers in our world. We have about 286 of them, and 158 countries have at least one transboundary river basin in their territory. That's the majority of countries that we have on this world. 40 percent of our global population relies on these basins. So in Southeast Asia, we have the Mekong River.

That's shared by China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. And it's a very rich ecosystem, a lot of special species. A lot of unique species are there, [01:02:00] important for people's livelihoods. The fish are extremely important, but what we're seeing is increasingly the river is being chopped up by having a series of dams throughout the whole of the river.

That means fish can't migrate to their spawning grounds. And that would have knock on effects to how people eat, not to mention how people are going to travel up and down, navigate up and down the river. There's been long standing tension between upstream states and downstream states on what to do. The situation, though, is all of the countries want to develop the river.

This is an area that has a lot of poverty, a lot of impetus for economic development. So the river is seen as a valuable source of economic development. But this is coming at the cost of people's livelihoods, people's health, ecosystem health, as I say. And being such a big river, this will have large scale impacts in the future.

ARTHUR SNELL : As an aspect of that, the Nile example, the [01:03:00] Mekong example you've just described, someone listening to this would say, well, this eventually leads to conflict. And I know that there's a big debate around this. So I guess it's time to ask the question, have there been water wars? Will there be water wars?

Some people say these wars have already taken place. Well, what's your response to that debate?

NAHO MIRUMACHI: I would say there has been no acute military war over water. States haven't gone to fight over water, but certainly there have been killings between farmers over water. And I think there's been a lot of harm that has been caused as a result of pollution and poor health, for example.

So, even though states may not be in acute conflict, vis a vis each other. Infrastructure can be targeted when there's conflict, for example, so dams can become target, like the Mosul Dam. But I think in the future, what we'll see is that these kind of [01:04:00] conflicts will be much more intense. When there are uncertainties around how much water there's going to be.

I think it's less likely to be between states because going to war over water is very costly. But I think there will be a lot of conflicts between communities. There's already a lot of conflict between local communities and businesses over how water is being used. So I think that kind of conflict will be quite an important problem that would need solving.

How This Billionaire Couple STOLE California's Water Supply - The Class Room ft. @SecondThought - More Perfect Union - Air Date 12-20-22

JT CHAPMAN: In the late 80s, they found their primary industry. Agriculture. They got into the pistachio business. Linda said, we've done more for the pistachio than anyone ever since it was planted in the Garden of Eden. My husband should be canonized for all the work he's done.

They started branching into other products, almonds, pomegranates, citrus wine, and acquiring more and more land to cover it, including some very important land in Kern County. [01:05:00] which granted them water rights in the area. As the Resnicks were building their empire, the state of California was building new water infrastructure with taxpayer money.

California's natural water supply is very inconsistent. Vastly differing amounts of rainfall means the state can go from surplus to drought and back very easily, so they build water banks to store water during surpluses to have during droughts. One important storage is the Curran Water Bank, started in 1988.

The facility was built with hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, which could have been a good thing. The people of California would have owned the water. But there were two Californians thirstier than the rest, and they wanted more water. Linda and Stuart Resnick. And they had a lot of political power.

We'll get to that. In 1994, state water officials, water infrastructure contractors, and agricultural landowners with water rights arranged a secretive meeting at a resort in Monterey Bay, California. These groups, a mix of private companies and public agencies, rewrote California's water [01:06:00] rules without any input from voters, Taxpayers or legislators.

The new rules, called the Monterey Plus Agreement or the Monterey Amendments, were devastating for working Californians, and great for agriculture billionaires. The original code included urban preference, a long standing rule that in times of drought, the state water board would give urban areas, where people live, access to water supplies before agricultural interests.

Monterey axed that. That means that in times of drought, the water systems for normal Californians would have to buy water from private companies because they weren't getting it from the state. The new agreement also loosened regulations on paper water. That's water that doesn't necessarily exist anywhere but on paper.

The full quantities of water that providers could have, but don't actually need to have. Today, five times as much water has been promised and sold as actually exists. And importantly, the meeting changed ownership of the current water bank. What once belonged to the state was transferred to a few private water contractors.[01:07:00]

One of which was Westside Mutual, a wholly owned subsidiary of Wonderful Foods. The Wonderful employee who runs Westside, Bill Fillimore, is the chairman of the public organization that manages the Kern Water Bank. Boom. One secret meeting, and the Resnicks owned nearly 60 percent of an important California water resource, built with hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money.

The new ownership, combined with the rules on paper and surplus water, meant that during times of drought, the Resnicks Could sell current water back to the state water systems. They took Californian taxpayers water and sold it back to them, both literally as the water supply, and also to grow expensive food like gourmet pistachios and pomegranate juice.

They converted the people's water into products many can't afford, and that's just one water bank. The resnicks also have control of other water boards and have been sued for directing more water towards their properties. So how do they get away with this Chinatown level chicanery? Gonna be a lot of irate citizens [01:08:00] when they find out that they're paying for water that they're not gonna get.

With philanthropy. The Resnicks donate millions of dollars to politicians and research institutions, which help them secure control over water systems, and even get more water and more taxpayer funding. One important project is the proposed California Delta Tunnel, a taxpayer funded project which would send water from Northern California to Central, where the Resnicks farms are.

They've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on state and federal legislation and politicians who support the Tunnel Project. But their favorite politician is Senator Dianne Feinstein.

Speaker 12: You come in here and you say it has to be my way or the highway.

JT CHAPMAN: Chair of the Energy and Water Subcommittee. She's a close, personal friend of the Resnicks, attending their holiday parties in Aspen and maintaining their financial interests.

A quick look through the bills she's sponsored shows several which would direct money to current adjacent water projects. The Resnicks even ask her for things directly. When a pesky study about endangering salmon and shad [01:09:00] fisheries threatened the Delta Tunnel, Stewart wrote a letter to Feinstein demanding a new study.

She immediately forwarded it to the Obama administration, who agreed to spend 750, 000 on a new study. It returned the same results as the first one. Can't buy science. But the Resnicks have tried. They are among the top donors to the University of California system, with their donations focusing on agricultural and ecological studies.

The Resnicks have basically bought entire departments who put out studies on how water systems should be managed, and where funding should go. That leads to even more federal and state taxpayer dollars being used to fix up what the Resnick's profit off of. This is all bad for California, even in a capitalistic sense.

Agriculture uses 80 percent of California's water, but only represents 2 percent of its GDP. The Resnick's water monopoly is just one way their quest for wealth hurts the rest of us. They allegedly lobby for increased tensions with Iran to keep embargoes on superior Iranian pistachios. Their giant [01:10:00] crops lead to monocultures which kill important pollinators.

They siphon taxpayer dollars into the company town charter schools they own, set up to train children to work for their farms. And of course, like any company of this size, they exploit their workers. We need to treat water for what it is. A necessary public resource. A human right. And something that shouldn't be owned by anyone.

Ep19. Water Wars – myth or reality? Part 2 - Disorder - Air Date 1-24-24

ARTHUR SNELL : I guess it's time to ask the question, have there been water wars? Will there be water wars?

Some people say these wars have already taken place. Well, what's your response to that debate?

So, even though states may not be in acute conflict, vis a vis each other. Infrastructure can [01:11:00] be targeted when there's conflict, for example, so dams can become target, like the Mosul Dam. But I think in the future, what we'll see is that these kind of conflicts will be much more intense. When there are uncertainties around how much water there's going to be.

for listening.

ARTHUR SNELL : Turning that concept slightly on its head, in a world where water scarcity may be a bigger problem and where the effectively the value of this commodity must go up, the water as a weapon of war, so denying access to [01:12:00] water, and of course, certainly in history, whether it's World War II history, or we could think about sort of Ukraine, Crimea, Russia, you know, there, there seem to be plenty of context where that has happened.

So is that something that you can foresee becoming much more widespread?

NAHO MIRUMACHI: Well, I think infrastructure is always a bit of a target, and I think whether that's water related infrastructure or energy related infrastructure, I, I think that will end up being featured in many of these strategic decisions. But, um, To give you another example, in South Asia, we have the Himalayas which have many areas of glaciers and they provide important rivers to large parts of the population.

And what we're seeing here is a retaliation of of governments trying to secure the headlands, the headwaters of these rivers. So China has announced that they will build a hydropower dam and then a few weeks [01:13:00] later you have India declaring that they have signed off on a new plan for a project. And so I think what you'll be seeing is some sort of war of words.

Or some form of diplomatic contention over how rivers are used. Whether that actually pans out into actual infrastructure is to be seen. A lot of the times these large scale infrastructure takes many years to build, ten years, even more. And by that time, with climate change, the situation might have changed so much that actually the dam might not be in a very good position to be built.

Because there might be less water, for example. So I think that these are the kinds of issues that we'll probably be seeing and require further scrutiny in the sense that what is being said might not necessarily turn out to be the actual location of the dam itself.

ARTHUR SNELL : It feels to me that the kind of burning question is the difference between sort of water stress and perhaps [01:14:00] that dries.

Conflict at a low level and what might be water crisis and and we see certain countries For example, you know the sahel region Which appears to be experiencing and and is going to face sort of extreme water stress And those are countries that are falling into really serious conflict. Is that coincidence?

I mean there could be political reasons for conflict. It could be all kinds of other factors or is this climate change phenomenon driving an Intensification of that sort of water conflict challenge.

NAHO MIRUMACHI: Well, first of all, I think there's a strong problem of governance failure. Even without climate change, there is a problem of governance failure.

There's a lot of governments that don't have the right legislation in place. There's a lot of missing accountability. There's a lot of poor business practice. And then you throw in issues [01:15:00] of climate change, which makes it worse. Because what climate change forces us as a society to do is to be more flexible.

So when an unexpected event, water related event happens, you need to respond very quickly. And if you have poor governance to begin with, it's going to be much more difficult to do that.

JASON PACK - HOST, DISORDER: Let's try to order the disorder together, Naho. What are the best options for moving forward? I'm not an expert in this domain, in even the slightest, but my inclination is that you can't have a system where people can make money by consuming too much now without paying a price for the future.

So what are the ways to put costs on overusage now?

NAHO MIRUMACHI: So one of the most fundamental things I would say is to have data sharing and data transparency. If you don't know how much your upstream neighbor is using, then that's a non [01:16:00] starter. So improved data transparency between countries, I think is quite important.

It's also the same between citizens and their governments as well, transparency in how water is being used, what kind of investments are being made, what kind of enforcement is being done, what kind of penalties are being missed, if there's an instance of pollution, for example, that would help provide a more robust response.

SECTION B: INSURANCE

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering Section B - Insurance.

Derek Seidman on Insurance and Climate (2024); Ariel Adelman on Disability Civil Rights (2024) - Counterspin - Air Date 1-17-25

JANINE JACKSON - HOST, COUNTERSPIN: In October, 2024, we Were watching images of devastation from hurricane Helene and alongside our sadness was anger because we know that Things didn't have to be this way. Derek Seidman is a writer, researcher, and historian who contributes regularly to Little Sis and to Truthout. He talked to Counterspin about the insurance industry as another often overlooked key player in the slow motion train wreck that is U. [01:17:00] S. climate policy. In your super helpful piece for Truthout, you cite a Washington Post story from last September. Here's the headline and subhead, quote, Home insurers cut natural disasters from policies as climate risks grow. Some of the largest U. S. insurance companies say extreme weather has led them to end certain coverages, exclude natural disaster protections, and raise prices.

Premiums, close quote. I think that drops us right into the heart of the problem you outline in that piece. What's going on? And why do you call it the insurance industry's self induced crisis?

DEREK SEIDMAN: Thank you. Well, certainly there is a growing crisis. The insurance industry is pulling back from certain markets and regions and states, because the [01:18:00] costs of insuring homes and other properties are becoming too expensive to remain profitable with the rise of extreme weather.

And so we've seen a lot of coverage in. The past few months over this growing crisis in the, in the insurance industry, but 1 of the critical things that's left out of this is that the insurance industry itself is a main actor in driving the rise of extreme weather through its very close relationship to the fossil fuel industry.

And in this. Narrative in the corporate media, the insurance industry on the 1 hand and extreme weather on the other hand are often treated like they're completely separate things. And they're just sort of coming together. And this quote unquote crisis is being created and it's a real problem that the connections aren't being made there.

So I guess a couple of things that should be said 1st, that, uh, The insurance industry is the fossil fuel industry, and if operations could not exist without the insurance industry, [01:19:00] we can look at that relationship in 2 ways. So, 1st, of course, is through insurance, the insurance giants, liberty, mutual, and so on and so on.

They collectively rake in billions of dollars every year in ensuring fossil fuel industry infrastructure, whether that's. Pipelines or offshore oil rigs or liquefied natural gas export terminals, this fossil fuel infrastructure and its continued expansion. This simply could not exist without underwriting by the insurance industry.

It would not get permit approvals. It would just not be able to operate. It couldn't track investors and so on. So that's 1 way. Another way is that. And this is something a lot of people might not be aware of, but the insurance industry is an enormous investor in the fossil fuel industry. Basically, 1 of the ways the insurance industry makes money is it takes the premiums and it pulls a chunk and invest.

So, so it's a major investor and the insurance industry across the board has tens of billions of dollars [01:20:00] invested in the fossil fuel industry. And this is actually stuff that anybody can go and look up. Because some of it's public. So, for example, the insurance giant AIG, because it's a big investor, it has to disclose its investments with the SEC.

And earlier this year, AIG disclosed that, for example, it had 117M dollars invested in ExxonMobil, 83M invested in Chevron, 46M in ConocoPhillips, and so on and so on. So, on the one hand, you have this sort of hypocritical cycle where the insurance industry is saying, To ordinary homeowners who are quite desperate, we need to jack up the price on your premiums, or we need to pull away altogether.

We can't insure you anymore. While on the other hand, it's driving and enabling and profiting from the very operations, fossil fuel operations that are causing the extreme weather in the 1st place that the insurance industry has been using to justify pulling back. From insuring [01:21:00] just regular homeowners.

JANINE JACKSON - HOST, COUNTERSPIN: Well, this is a structural problem clearly that you're pointing to, and you don't want to be too conspiratorial about it.

But these folks do literally have dinner with 1 another, you know, these insurance executives and the fossil fuel companies. And then I want to add, you complicate it even further by talking about knock on effects that include making homes uninsurable when that happens. Well, then that contributes to this thing where banks and hedge funds buy up homes.

So it's part of an even bigger cycle that folks probably have heard about.

DEREK SEIDMAN: Yeah, absolutely. This whole scenario, it's horrible because it impacts homeowners and renters. If you talk to landlords, they say that the rising costs of insurance are their biggest expense. And they are in part taking that out on tenants by raising rents, right?

JANINE JACKSON - HOST, COUNTERSPIN: Right.

DEREK SEIDMAN: Yeah. But it also really threatens just global financial stability. I mean, with the rise of extreme [01:22:00] weather and homes becoming more expensive to ensure, or even uninsurable home values can really collapse. And when they collapse, aside from the horrific human drama of all that. And banks are reacquiring for those homes that in turn are unsellable because of extreme weather, and they can't be insured.

The big picture of all this is that it leads to banks acquiring a growing amount of risky properties, and it can create a lot of financial instability. And we saw what happened after 2008, as you mentioned, right with private equity coming in and scooping up homes. And so, yeah, it creates a lot of systemic.

Financial instability opens the door for financial predators like private equity and hedge funds to come in.

JANINE JACKSON - HOST, COUNTERSPIN: And it seems to require an encompassing response, a response that acknowledges the various moving pieces of this. I wonder, finally, is there responsive law or policy either on the table now or just maybe in our imagination [01:23:00] that would address these concerns?

DEREK SEIDMAN: Well, there are organizers that are definitely starting to do something about it. And there are some members of Congress that are also starting to do something about it. For this story. I interviewed some really fantastic groups. 1 of them is ensure our future. And this is sort of a broader campaign that is working with.

Different groups around the country and really demanding that ensures stop ensuring new fossil fuel build out that they phase out their insurance coverage for existing fossil fuels for all the reasons that we've been talking about today at the state level. There's groups that are doing really important and interesting things.

So 1 of the groups that I interviewed was called Connecticut citizen action group, and they've been working hard in coalition with other groups in Connecticut. To introduce and pass a state bill that would create a climate fund to support residents that are impacted by extreme weather Connecticut seen its fair share of extreme weather.

And this fund would be financed by taxing [01:24:00] insurance policies in the state that are connected to fossil fuel projects. So, it's sort of also a kind of disincentive to investing fossil fuels in New York. Their coalition of groups and lawmakers just introduced something called the share our communities bill and this would.

And insurers from underwriting new fossil fuel projects, when it would set up new protections for homeowners that are facing extreme weather disasters. I spoke to organizers in Freeport, Texas with a group called better Brazoria and these are people that are on the Gulf coast, really on the front lines and better Brazoria is just 1 of a number of frontline groups along the Gulf coast that are organizing around the insurance industry.

And they're trying to meet with insurance giants and say to them, look, what you're doing is we're losing. Our homeowners insurance while you're insuring these risky LNG plants that are getting hit by hurricanes and fires are starting and trying to make the case to them that this is just not even good business for them.

And then more recently, you've seen Bernie Sanders and others start [01:25:00] to hold the insurance industry speak to the fire a little more opening up investigations into their. Connection to the fossil fuel industry, and how this is creating financial instability. So, I think this is becoming more and more of an issue that people are seeing is a real problem for the financial system.

I mean, it's something that we should absolutely think about when we think about the climate crisis and the sort of broader infrastructure that's enabling the fossil fuel industry to exist. and continue its polluting operations that are causing the climate crisis and extreme weather. So I think we're going to see only more of this going forward.

Insurance Company CORRUPTION and The Worst Confirmation Hearings EVER *FRANTASTIC FRIDAY* - The Bitchuation Room - Air Date 1-18-25

FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: A week ago, I learned about what is called the, um, the FAIR program, right? Um, which assists. Fair plan in California, which helps homeowners be able to cover and ensure their homes. And I sort of read it and I thought, you know, we talked about it as like, wow, this is really great.

Like this, this is good because so many insurance companies in the midst of climate change are leaving. And I saw a great, you [01:26:00] know, I think someone tweeted or something about, you know, like, look, don't believe in climate change. Your insurance company does, um, as evidenced by the fact that they are denying people coverage.

They have You know, my sister in law a year ago got their home. They're not they were in Altadena And the state farm, you know, canceled their print plan to back to the fair plan. I was like, this sounds like maybe a good thing that Democrats have done in the state to make up for the gaps in the insurance and like stick it to the insurance company.

This sounds like the Obama care of insurance, but Explain what the fair plan is because actually what you found out is there's a little bit of corruption that has been going on behind the scenes. I don't know if that's the longest wind up to your article, but let me, um, let me just bring it up because your piece is called We Will All Be Paying for L. A. 's Wildfires. Um, here it is from, uh, the Lever. Where did you start with this? And maybe you can start with the fair plan if you'd like.

LOIS PARSHLEY: Of course, yeah. So you may have [01:27:00] noticed that there are a lot of extreme weather disasters recently. Uh, there have actually been 27 in the last year, in 2024. Uh, over a billion dollars.

Damage damages per per extreme storm. And that is a lot more than there used to be. So what homeowners are seeing is that their insurance premiums are going up as a result. And a lot of people like your sister have found, they can't find anyone to write insurance for them at all. And so what states are doing in response are creating these programs called state insurers of last resort.

And California's FAIR plan is one example of this. They are created for people who can't find insurance through the traditional market. And in California, it's a public private partnership. It's actually run by insurance companies under the state insurance commissioner's oversight. And it offers policies to people who can't buy private insurance.

But those [01:28:00] policies are often more expensive and provide worse coverage. So, as private companies like State Farm Now, why do they, why can't

FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: they? Is it because they Sorry, go ahead. Oh, is it, like, is it because they can't afford it? Or is it because they got kicked off of their insurance, their fire insurance before?

What is preventing people from accessing fire insurance?

LOIS PARSHLEY: Yes, so the fare plan is only available to people who cannot buy private insurance. So you have to have been declined by a private insurance company in order to go on to the fare plan.

Speaker 56: Got it.

LOIS PARSHLEY: In California, that program has grown over 60 percent in the last year.

So a whole lot of people are now in this situation.

FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: Right. So it's either like it's no one will insure them effectively. Private insurance companies are leaving the state. So then the state government fills in the gaps. But as you're saying, it is also reliant. [01:29:00] It's a private public partnership here. And it feels almost like the Cobra of healthcare, you know, you know, Cobra, where it's like, we're going to step in and it's, it's incredibly expensive, but we're going to like, you know, give you healthcare for just a little bit, uh, after having been let go or, you know, uh, laid off from your job.

LOIS PARSHLEY: Well, it's interesting you make that comparison to health care because former Insurance Commissioner of California, Dave Jones, has actually suggested that one of the solutions to way too many people being on this date insurer of last resort and having really expensive insurance would be to offer subsidies similar to the way that the Affordable Care Act helps make health insurance plans more affordable.

FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: Interesting. Okay. So what did you find when it comes to the the insurance commissioner Ricardo Lara? I understand that there was actually a very key piece of legislation or reform that passed. [01:30:00] It was it last year or the year before that impacts recipients of the fair planner people.

LOIS PARSHLEY: So California's insurance commissioner is currently Ricardo Lara. He was elected in 2018 and received significant contributions from the insurance industry during his campaign over 270, 000. And during his reelection bid, he also accepted 125, 000 that were sort of passed through two different LGBTQ plus groups after they received similar amounts from the insurance industry.

FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: Um, and wait, so staying on time out. So it was like, it looked like a donation from this LGBTQ plus group. It was actually originated from an insurance company. Do you think they did that? Explicitly to hide that they were giving money to the insurance commissioner and they are an insurance company.

LOIS PARSHLEY: Well, I can't speak to their intentions.

That's beyond the scope of what I can speak to, but [01:31:00] I can tell you that they donated similar amounts shortly after receiving donations from the insurance industry. So it does look like there may have been some kind of pass through campaign donation. Got

Speaker 57: it.

FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: Got it. And so, and so then what did they get for their money?

Again, I guess maybe before that. Ricardo, Laura, like what is the insurance commissioner supposed to do of any state?

LOIS PARSHLEY: So insurance commissioners are supposed to regulate the insurance industry. They're supposed to make sure that the companies who are operating in the state have enough money to pay out claims in case there is a spike.

Storm. They're supposed to make sure that those companies are operating above board. And in these, as the state insurer of last resort programs grow, they're also trying to make sure that those programs are able to operate successfully and provide people coverage.

FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: Okay. Okay. So kind of like go after fraud, make sure insurance companies are paying out what they're [01:32:00] owing, what they owe people.

I know Ricardo Lara is actually going to do a couple of, um, You know, town hall information sessions around Los Angeles, you know, in the coming days, you know, ostensibly, this is a good guy. This is a guy on the side of, you know, homeowners and people who've been displaced, but he's also a guy who then received money from the very industry that he is supposed to be regulating.

So what did they get for.

LOIS PARSHLEY: So Commissioner Lara, to be fair, is in a really tough spot. Insurers are leaving the state and have been for several years and that has created a huge problem for the state insurer of last resort plan. It has over 450 billion dollars in liabilities now and it only has about 385 million dollars in funds to handle them.

He is really between a rock and a hard place. And the way he has approached this is, as you mentioned, after several conversations around the state, um, and meeting with insurance industry executives, he has developed a [01:33:00] package of reforms that he says are going to help bring private companies back to the state.

Um, one of those big changes. Is in changing how insurance companies are allowed to set their rates. Previously, the state of California, which has some pretty tight regulations compared to other states, wouldn't let insurance companies look at how the climate may change in the future. In order to tell homeowners how much they had to pay for their risk and insurance companies were rightfully pretty mad about that because the historical record is not necessarily a good indicator anymore of what risks might your home might face in the future.

Um, so we're going to Laura decided that companies are now going to be allowed to use these things called catastrophe models, which look ahead and to the future and factor in climate trends.

FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: So, in other words. Incorporating in like these once in a hundred year floods or fires in [01:34:00] the these events that you mentioned earlier, the 27, you know, extreme weather events that happened last year. So they can basically they can factor in climate change into their business model and determining whether or not they cover a household.

LOIS PARSHLEY: Yes, and on the face of it, that is a reasonable thing for a company to want to do, and in return, Laura promised that these companies would significantly expand their coverage in the state, insuring 85 percent of homeowners and wildfire areas. But if you actually read the regulations fine print, you see that insurance.

Insurance companies have the option to only increase their coverage by as little as 5%, and if they can't do that after two years, they're allowed to just basically be like, sorry, we tried. Um, so it doesn't achieve the objective that the commissioner publicly said that it would. Advocacy groups also say that these models are expected to really increase [01:35:00] rates.

FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: . So, but in other words, like if I'm an insurance company and I'm covering like 25 percent of California now, um, I would only have to increase the coverage 5 percent to 30 percent of homeowners who are asking me, you know, uh, to insure their homes and that would be considered like, you know, Permissible, uh, under the commissioner.

And then if I can't within two years, like increase it 5%, I could be like, sorry, I'm just going to go out of state altogether.

LOIS PARSHLEY: Right. So the program seems quite unlikely to achieve its ostensible goal of expanding private insurance coverage and getting people off. Right.

SECTION C: POLITICAL FAILURE

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Up next Section C - Political Failure.

Wildfire Conspiracies And Reinvigorating Black Male Voters with Mondale Robinson & Trae Crowder (Ep 263) Part 2 - The Bitchuation Room - Air Date 1-15-25

FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: Trey

TREY CROWDER: Mm hmm.

FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: Is there something you're bitching about? Beyond all the things that we should be bitching about.

TREY CROWDER: Well, I mean, I feel like this is adjacent to the subject at hand But I've been bitching about the state of conspiracy Theories and conspiracy people for what? Cause it's like back in my [01:36:00] day, like when I was college age and stuff, conspiracy theories were at least the, you know, the more popular ones were kind of relatively harmless.

You can have fun with it. You smoke weed in a dorm room and talk about okay. And aliens or whatever, you know, the truth is out there, man, stuff. And it did not mean that you also believe that like, you know, Bill Gates was in league with the Clintons and Hollywood to harvest baby blood. Use wifi to turn us all gay and trans people were, you know, lizards or whatever.

Like you didn't, it didn't necessarily go hand in hand with all that. And I just lament, uh, the trajectory of conspiracies. And because now it's like, it's like what happened with, uh, Christians. In like, you know, the seventies and eighties where it became a thing where it's like, they became hand in hand.

Like if you're a Christian, you have to, you vote Republican. It's taken for granted. You have to, you can't be a Christian if you don't. That's happened with conspiracies now too. It's like, it's just, you can't be like, I love aliens. I can't even talk about aliens anymore. Are people going to think that I'm, you know, hardcore MAGA or something?

And everything. Has to be [01:37:00] a conspiracy to even things that are very readily explainable. There's gotta be some grander truth that usually involves, you know, a globalist cabal, uh, by which they mean Jewish people usually. So it always ends up leading there. And they're just so much more mainstream. Used to, you had to have some level of tech savvy to even find out about conspiracy theory.

You know what I mean? Like you're right. You're aunt Tammy on. She would never have been able to find like 8chan or whatever these like, you know, these forums and the bowels of the internet, but now they don't even have to find them. They get, they get, they get brought to them, you know, like your 65 year old retired aunt is on Facebook and Facebook.

It's like, Hey, are you mad? Do you not really know why you need something to be mad at?

FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: Well, that's a crazy

TREY CROWDER: bullshit thing that you could be mad at. That is,

FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: here's a meeting with like two muscular people and one of them is Jesus and one of them's the devil. And like the devil is also the Democrats. Yeah.

I mean, we're also, we're not talking about Zuckerberg today, but like, we've [01:38:00] seen the full one 80 of Zuckerberg, you know, because of 2016 and how so many. Or in 2020 and how so many people were just radicalized by a Facebook meme, like you're saying, and then decided to storm the Capitol off of it. Um, and he was like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, this is bad.

Maybe we should actually like, you know, filter some stuff, uh, and, and kick some of these people off. And now he's like, nah, just let it rip again. Do it again.

TREY CROWDER: Yeah. Why not? Well, he's learned that that's, you know, since we, I think he knows his demographic at Facebook, what it is now largely, and that there's more, uh, built more of a future in.

In Facebook for, uh, or more of a future for Facebook and like, uh, fascist minion memes or whatever the corner of the market on those on a personal less important level. I'm also been bitching about the inexorable March of time. Just getting older. It's like, I just, I don't know if it's just the new chair that my back just hurts and I didn't even do anything to it.

And that's the last time I was on your show. I was bitching about plantar [01:39:00] fasciitis, which you made fun of me for the way I pronounced it. But anyway, so I thought going

FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: back

TREY CROWDER: and neck is just wrong. And for no reason, cause it's just, that's just what, uh, you know, time and earth, I

FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: think you bitched about time.

Last time you were here, you were kind of

TREY CROWDER: obsessed with time, honestly. Cause it's like, you got, you got like a little one, right? You got a baby or a toddler.

FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: Yeah, I do. Yeah.

TREY CROWDER: Well, I have been. My sons are 12 and 13 and it's been really, I'm staring down the barrel of puberty and, you know, screw you dad and all this crazy stuff and like.

I'm not dealing well with it. I've got two close friends that had babies this last year and it's just like I'm just every day at least three times. I'm like, where did the time go? How did I get here? What's even happening right now? It's just, it's messing with me. I'm having, you know, on the verge of an existential crisis.

I hope they figure out these anti aging drugs or something eventually, you know, and I'm gonna have to make enough money to be able to get those by the way. Uh, I gotta figure something out. We're gonna,

FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: Ozempic will be really cheap, but the sort of like, you know, Blood Boys will be [01:40:00] very expensive to, you know, the fountain of eternal youth.

Um, I, I just think it's wrong that like, Only the worst people will never die. So

TREY CROWDER: it's so funny you say that. Cause whenever the anti aging stuff comes up, I always tell people like my, what I always go to is I say, Oh, you know how they always say, you'll hear sometimes someone will say like the first person to live, to be 150 years old has already been born.

You know how people say that? It's like, yeah, I know who it is. It's Andrew Tate. Andrew Tate's the first person to be 150 years old. I just know it. I just feel it in my heart because you're right. It's like the worst people, they never die. Ever like they don't, they

FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: never die. I mean, uh, Pinochet, uh, has the blood of maybe 30, 000 Chileans on his hand.

Died at like 89 on house arrest in, uh, in Santiago or outside of it. I mean, Kissinger like

TREY CROWDER: just died, like relatively speaking, died.

FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: Speaking of that ilk. Yes. Some, one of his, his good close friends, Kissinger. Yeah. The good die young. I mean, this [01:41:00] is real. Um, I was just learning about, you know, Octavia Butler, who's, Was born and lived in Pasadena.

Oh, excuse me, Altadena that burned down and just shout out and hearts out to Altadena and I didn't know Octavia Butler died. I think she was only 67. She's like, you know incredible sci fi writer. Yeah Nothing.

TREY CROWDER: Yeah,

FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: so yes the the good die young and hate somehow It just clears the arteries.

TREY CROWDER: It preserves you.

Yeah. I don't know. Hate keeps you going for some reason. Spite and hate just a strong, uh, biological. Which is crazy because

FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: every time I feel spite and hate, my like heart rate goes up. Shrivel

TREY CROWDER: up. Yeah, right. I don't know. It's just a way of things.

Even More News: Gaza Ceasefire, GOP Conditioning Aid to LA, and the TikTok Ban Might Really Happen - Some More News - Air Date 1-17-25

KATY STOLL - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: Yeah, it's a democratic state, but there is a lot of conservatives here. I mean, there are more liberals are pretty conservative.

JONATHAN: There are more raw Republicans here than in almost any [01:42:00] other state. Yeah, we're quite a populist state.

Exactly. It's how numbers. So, uh, I, I personally think this is just cable news nonsense that they're using to score points and then they'll give the funding. But a number of members of the GOP have been suggesting that, uh, there should be conditions before California gets federal aid. House Speaker Mike Johnson says, obviously there's been water resource mismanagement, forest management mistakes, all sorts of problems, and it does come down to leadership.

He said, uh, colleagues had discussed tying disaster aid to an agreement to raise the debt ceiling.

KATY STOLL - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: So that'll help all of those other things you just flagged. Our forest mismanagement.

JONATHAN: No, I think the, the, the funding will have to go to a big vacuum, a la space balls to suck up all the leaves and brush around the whole state.

No, Donald Trump said, uh, we're going to take care of your water situation and we'll force it down his throat. And we'll say, Gavin, if you don't do it, [01:43:00] we're not giving you any of that fire money that we send you all the time for all the fire forest fires that you have. Um, yeah, no, this goes on and on.

There's a bunch of people.

CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: You know what? Uh, Republicans love to do. on stuff. I'm sure they'll help out with all the money that is necessary to, uh, improve our infrastructure and environmental conservat Uh, sorry, go ahead, go ahead, Katie.

KATY STOLL - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: Well, first I wanted to, well, I agree with you. Uh, Claudia Tenney, GOP rep.

JOE ROGAN: Ooh.

KATY STOLL - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: Uh, I'm just going to highlight this one because it had, it gave me a visceral reaction. California is a disaster. Those same people weren't concerned about the people in North Carolina or the people in Florida who we've tried to help. Are you fucking kidding me?

CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: I remember crying

KATY STOLL - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: about it on this show.

CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: Yeah.

KATY STOLL - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: We care very much about everything. We don't have the same hatred for other states, the way it gets directed at California, and I also want to say. I mean, I think these are [01:44:00] all, these statements are gross and disgusting and yeah, we can have a conversation about forest management. We need to, we can have a conversation about water things, not in the way that you're talking about it with, you know, Gavin Newsom destroying Trump's imaginary plan, you know, the water, like there are absolutely absolutely.

Very big conversations that need to be had in this. This transcends left. It transcends right. This is all of us needing to, because it's hard. This isn't one administration's decision. This is hundreds of years of decisions that have been made and developing land in areas that never should have been developed and our use of water in so many places.

How about With A. I. How about the amount of water that gets sucked up into that? This is a big conversation and very important, but not the way that they're framing it in some sort of bullshit [01:45:00] partisan trial of California's Democrats or whatever. Get the fuck out of here. You have no idea what you're talking about.

CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: Well, they also don't care.

KATY STOLL - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: They don't care, but also I do think that all of us need to, uh, start learning about some of these things and having good faith conversations with experts and people that we might not agree with ideologically and stuff, but do care about the forest. You know, the firefighters.

That everybody is calling heroes. A lot of them would probably disagree on a lot of stuff, but they have really insightful information about fire management, you know, it, anyway, I'll get off of my little tangent here. Yeah, no, it's

CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: all frustrating. Uh, the, you know, local news is generally going to be, you know, More helpful about this and the national, uh, news and national politicians are just gonna do this.

Uh, this is just what they do. Um, no matter what happens. Um, and it just so happens to be about a terrifying [01:46:00] disaster. Um, I

KATY STOLL - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: do want to underscore a point that you'd said. Jonathan, this isn't representative of the way people actually feel. And online discourse, the shit that you're seeing is not representative.

People are gutted by this. They see themselves in this disaster. At least, I live in a conservative little enclave. There's lots of them in California. People are gutted. People are opening up their homes. People are worried about fire management of the forest. People care deeply and so the reality of, of people's experiences out in the world is so far removed from this.

JONATHAN: Well, right. They just see, like, people like them who have lost everything. Of course it transcends politics for everyone but these freaks on Fox Business, you know?

KATY STOLL - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: And so much of this vitriol is in part because it's [01:47:00] Los Angeles.

CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: Oh, yeah.

KATY STOLL - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: All of this, so what happened down the line, some of the big picture conversations about insurance.

This does affect all of us. People are reeling because it's not just Los Angeles that they're dropping. State Farm has dropped policies. Talking with someone this morning, State Farm dropped us two years ago and we've been struggling to find coverage. So, You know with all of it. It doesn't just affect Los Angeles is the point it affects the rest of the state It affects the rest of the country moving on what else we got fires to play that Rogan Rogan

CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: Rogan thing

JOE ROGAN: It's fucking climate change.

No, it's arson you fucking idiots. I think it's mr. Beast That's a strong accusation bold no, no just kidding But they've been trying to get rid of the homeless for a while You Bro, the homeless are doing it. Well, they're flammable. Everyone is, but they, uh, they're more inclined to use fire to get their [01:48:00] anger out.

Yeah, that's true. Yeah.

KATY STOLL - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: To get their anger out. There is literally zero evidence to suggest that any of this. Started because a homeless person was starting a fucking fire. Cody's got something. I've got something more to say It's fine both came in hot after watching that

CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: I just

KATY STOLL - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: I'll let you go first, but I do have something else to say Oh continue .

JONATHAN: You guys are jealous of the of the comedy on the comedy podcast because that's kind of us too and they're Really up in the game on the comedy podcast.

Yeah, they're

CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: really up in the game. Um,

JONATHAN: it's sorry.

CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: I mean a it's funny. It is funny that Rogan, like stopped at his tracks at a joke. I could let mr. Beast like joke and he's like, oh Like you couldn't doesn't know how to riff. Whatever. It doesn't matter Joe Rogan Is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, um, and doesn't know what he's talking about, and maybe they're starting fires to keep warm, um, because they're homeless, and [01:49:00] also, uh, pretty clear that a power line, uh, was the cause of the Eaton fire, from what I've read, I'm not sure if that's Not confirmed, but that's what they think.

KATY STOLL - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: Unconfirmed, it's what they think, and the other one is in the zone, I believe. But it could also be fireworks. That's from New Year's Eve that started a fire that they put out. But maybe there was something smoldering.

CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: But also, um, and the sparks of the fire, the source that is, um, important to determine.

But the vast devastation and the spreading of it and the inability to contain it was. Exacerbated by climate change, Jo, like very obviously. It's not like

KATY STOLL - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: people are saying that climate change literally lit the match. Right, exactly. A very easy way to demonize a marginalized community. A community that has nothing, literally nothing.

Uh, [01:50:00] yes, homeless people do start fires. And, you know, It is an issue. It's not about them, but you're right, Cody, to keep warm, to cook food, to do whatever, and, yes, it is a very To get out

CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: their

KATY STOLL - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: anger. To get out their fucking anger? What are you talking about? Dumb piece

CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: of shit. Uh, but

KATY STOLL - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: there is a problem with that safety for both the unhoused and communities around it.

And we're on top of it. That happens a lot. My friend lived next door to a building, uh, an area that regularly this was an issue. And I don't know where it stands, but we, we handle that, but you have to have an understanding and a compassion that this is a part of a big problem that we are all fairly complicit in and, uh, desperately need answers to.

And it is a separate problem from this wildfire situation. And yes, also, after the two major fires started, there are reports that some of these little fires might have been arson. for listening. The ones that were put out. [01:51:00] We don't have real confirmation on that. That isn't about being unhoused or not.

That is people taking advantage of a very chaotic moment. And it is an ugly, sick thing, but we still don't even have proof of that.

LA Fires Sparked By Climate Change - The Muckrake Political Podcast - Air Date 1-10-25

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Nick, the fire that is happening not too far from you, uh, in Los Angeles, of course, uh, resulting from dry conditions and incredible historic winds that have been the flames has now burned over 27, 000 acres, destroyed a known over 2000 structures, killed at least five people, probably more.

Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated, uh, purely an apocalyptic scene there in Los Angeles. Um, unfortunately, as we've sort of been tipping, tiptoeing around, this is the type of thing that we should expect more of. As climate change is not addressed, as, uh, the multiple conditions that create the crisis that we've been covering and discussing for years now, [01:52:00] everything from Resource extraction, austerity in our politics, what things are funded, what things aren't, changing climate conditions, as well as many tragedies that we're not even going to know about.

I mean, you and I were talking about off mic about insurance and whether or not some of these people are going to be covered. And we've covered in the past, in past episodes, that insurance companies are going to stop covering People and stop offering them, you know, coverage in places like this. Um, this is a worsening tragedy with every passing day.

And, you know, it, it pisses me off to no end that not only are you in, in, in the line of this, I know people who have had to evacuate. I know people who have had to leave their homes and possibly lose everything. And the fact that this is only going to continue to become more commonplace and the fact that this is not going to be solved anytime soon, it fills my heart with rage.

NICK HAUSELMAN - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Yeah. [01:53:00] And you know, you keep trying to sort of figure out, well, who's to blame on this? And why is this happening? Um, you know, when you have winds that high, the littlest thing, you know, you can have power lines that get blown down and then spark. And then all of a sudden it's done. Uh, you, you see a lot of people in the Trump is one of those people who keep trying to say that, like, because Gavin Newsom, who is not in charge of the forestry service of California.

But like, because he's not out there raking dry leads in the middle of the forest, it's why we have these things, which is so far from the science and, uh, you know, or, or, or controlled burns. We don't have controlled burns. You can't do controlled burns in Runyon Canyon. You, the thing would go up in flames.

If you try to even control that kind of thing, it's not, that's just not how that works. Um, and so the only solution I was looking at, it's okay. If you want to try and have power lines that are not above ground, well, uh, you would need, you know, I don't even know how much money it would cost to do that and, uh, and how long that would take would take a very long time.

It's not really practical at this point. [01:54:00] So, um, it simply is what it is, and we have to be able to have enough response and resources to, to handle it and limit the damage, but it's not, you're never going to eliminate it.

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Well, I mean, it would help if we had a federal work program that invested in people going around and updating infrastructure.

Like, if we're not going to solve the principal conditions that are creating climate change, I mean, you might as well pay people to make the country more ready for climate change. You know, you could go ahead and do that, but none of these solutions are on the menu. The problem here, Nick, and, I, you know, I, you and I, we're, we're a little bit, you're a little bit older than I am, but I think you and I both grew up in a time in which we would go to school and we would be handled mags, you know, handed magazines that, uh, what, what were those like, we had like ranger Rick, you know, a weekly reader.

You know, I'm talking about those type of scholastic type of

publications.

And we heard about climate change going back [01:55:00] into the 1980s and I would read these articles and like, it would hurt, you know, I would read about animals that were becoming extinct or about, you know, ecosystems that were being affected and I always expected at some point or another, there would be some sort of an incident that would happen where everybody would throw up their hands and suddenly say, Hey, we need to do something about this.

I was naive about capitalism. I was naive about what capitalism was going to do. Not only was it going to exacerbate climate change, but it was going to figure out ways to profit from it, which has created this new situation, Nick, where, you know, we can say the Republican party says climate change is a real, the Republican party knows climate change is real.

Donald Trump knows climate change is real. The oil executives, energy executives, the oligarchs, they all know it's real. What we're actually watching right now and how this is covered is how they're handling climate change, which is they're figuring out how to hide what is happening while profiting off of it and also benefiting their own political agendas.

So what have we seen? We've seen [01:56:00] an environment of cruelty and human indignity that's been created. We're now treating immigrants the same way we're going to treat climate refugees. We're basically going to give resources to people who are favored in status while other people can either die or be displaced.

And on top of that, we're just going to go ahead and take advantage of the conditions that are being created. This is climate fascism. And it is being carried out in plain sight now, and we're getting the answer, which is they're not going to come to their senses. They're going to put their foot down on the accelerator and then they're going to profit from it.

NICK HAUSELMAN - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Uh, you know, I, I don't know how I feel when you say, uh, that they. They know that climate change is real. I honestly feel like, I mean, maybe Trump, I guess, but when you hear some of the others, you really truly feel like they just assume this is just a natural cycle of millions of years of, uh, of our, you know, of the environment.

I, I, I don't know. But even, but it doesn't really matter, right? That doesn't really matter because again, the science is in, [01:57:00] and I don't know why anybody would want to screw around. I remember when, uh, like, like CFCs were banned, uh, when we did that spring of, um, uh. You know, for, um, deodorant cans, they had CFCs were banned in 1987.

Right. Uh, no one gave a shit. No one said anything about, Oh, these are lefty environmentalists. Yeah. And we just did it. And we were all like, yeah, that makes sense. Uh, let's not, you know, put that out in our atmosphere. Um, you know, so even then in the middle of the Reagan years, uh, we didn't have this kind of pushback like we do now.

And I mean, I think it's safe to say that, right.

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Well, yes, I think that is true. But at the same time, like they've been denying climate change since they found out about it. I mean, the energy companies have known about this since the 1950s, 1960s. They've known all along and they have just created their own infrastructure to hide this stuff.

Alternate academics and alternate intelligentsia. Um, you know, you bring up an interesting point. You say you don't know if Trump knows that. That's a great point. [01:58:00] He is so addled that we don't actually know what he's talking about. And of course, we're going to get into Greenland here in a second, which is part of eco fascism.

And we'll talk about why that is. He might not know what is real and what's not. You know, a lot of people tell themselves like very convenient fairy tales. Well, it's just a cycle. Oh, it's not real. But a lot of people have been working overtime and spending billions upon billions of dollars in order to make tens of billions and hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars to go ahead and keep these things going.

So there is a class of the right and of the Republican party that knows full and well that this is a thing. The same way there are people within the democratic party who know that climate change is real and have no interest whatsoever in actually changing the status quo in order to, to keep it from happening.

So at this point, without a major sea change, You and I, and the people listening to this, we're all going to experiences, whether it's food, food shortages, droughts, uh, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, whatever it is, [01:59:00] uh, poor air, you know, like all of these things are eventually coming through. for us and the hardening apparatus of authoritarian state power is there to keep us in our place and to keep us from being protected from it and to keep us from being taken care of because of it.

And so as a result, like what we're actually dealing with now are the full consequences of this thing coming into full view.

NICK HAUSELMAN - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: You could argue that one of the reasons why they really want a wall along the Southern border is to stop, um, people who are having to come here from because of the, uh, environment, you know, as that, you know, you can picture the apocalyptic, you know, the global South suffers for sure.

There's no water. There's no resources. They have, we're the only place that has them and people are going to be coming. That's why they want to do this.

Reactionary Conspiracy Nuts Blame California Wildfires On Homeless Drug Addicts - The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder - Air Date 1-17-25

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: There is an attempt when you have these type of, um, uh, huge catastrophes that are a function of climate change and the dynamic [02:00:00] between the changing weather and how we've built our society, where and how we've built our society.

And in LA, you've had virtually no rain for almost a year. And you had. 70 to 100 mile wind gusts that were going on and it just made it impossible to contain these fires. And this is a function of climate change. Everyone who studies this agrees, but the right wants to make it about Competence even though you have firefighters to say we could have had a thousand other firemen didn't it wouldn't have made a difference They want to make it about Who may have set the fires this is in DI Aaron bass is gonna yeah, and You know you even saw this in the context of North Carolina When there were [02:01:00] unprecedented floods in areas that had not been flooded before and roads washed away, towns were destroyed.

They couldn't necessarily talk about the local officials in these North Carolina town, so they made it about FEMA. It's coming in to take away your money, your, your, your, your business and your house and et cetera, et cetera. Oh, so it was the federal government that time. It's always about trying to distract from the, the primary point, which is climate change is real.

And, uh, this is how the right wingers address this stuff.

TUCKER CARLSON: But I didn't know that. So it was really clear to the people who run the city and the state that you had this combination of dry conditions and heavy winds, high winds. Yeah. And, and because there's

MICHAEL SCHELLENBERGER: so many ignitions because of really these two factors, mostly the electrical wires, you know, um, uh, brushing up against, uh, you know, vegetation and triggering a fire.

That's kind of one of the [02:02:00] main ones. The other one is, is homeless people. Starting fires, um, all over L. A., uh, half of all fires come up by then.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Um, let's put up this graphic.

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: We looked this up, by the way, for sourcing, cause we just wanted to fact check this claim and they get it from an LA Times study from 2021 that shows that around 54 percent of the fires responded to by the LA, LA FD in that year.

were for fires that were set by homeless people. But as you can see it, and Sam will say where this is, where most unhoused people are concentrated is in downtown LA.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And let's be clear set by homeless people. All fires, well, I would say, uh, all fires that happen within the context of, like, where people are living, uh, generally, in some fashion or another, are set by people, right?

Like, it's people who, uh,

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: It says in the article, caught fire, tents caught fire.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: It's people who set up, who set up, uh, um, uh, electrical lines. You know, occasionally you get a fire from a lightning bolt. [02:03:00] But, uh, it's people who set up electric lines, it is people who, uh, you know, uh, drop, uh, cigarettes, it's people who have, uh, you know, uh, forest, uh, they, they campfires, um, and homeless people living downtown in, uh, L.

A., undoubtedly, you have, uh, these small fires. They're trying to conflate these two things. Because there's no indication that deep in the woods in the Palisades, there's a homeless person living there setting a fire. Or that, um, it was a, uh, the fire that, uh, you know, to the extent that people have any ideas of what happened in Altadena, it was a transformer that blew and it was an electrical fire, but got to bring in the homeless thing.

Even though, granted it's fire, but it's not, uh, it's very unlikely the cause of these two major fires, but you got to bring it in because we got to do some work on [02:04:00] this.

MICHAEL SCHELLENBERGER: Uh, L. A. Fire Department are started by homeless people. It's been that way for years. Why do homeless people start fires? Uh, well, you know, it turns out meth heads love to start fires.

You know, there's just every drug has its kind of weird Pause it. The question

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: is, why do homeless people like to start fires? Well, first of all, you've got a, you're, you've got a canister of kerosene and you're, you're cooking your food. Or, uh, you, you're in your, uh, you got a candle. I don't know. Because you don't have any batteries or a flashlight and your tent catches on fire.

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Or it can be cold some nights in LA when there's no sun it can get really low. I mean in New York City it gets even colder and we know that here there are fires that are sometimes started by unhoused folks. But the conditions aren't the same as in Los Angeles.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Just decrepit and gross and look at how they jump.

Why do they like to start fires? Not fires started by homeless people. The [02:05:00] vast majority of which we have every reason to believe was accidental. Um, just like fires, they were set in, you know, uh, you have a low income, um, uh, uh, fires in, in, in this city generally happen in low income situations because there's A lack of heat.

We're going to use the stove for heat or we got to put in a, uh, electric, uh, um, heater. Those are more prone to catching fire. Um, or the electrical system is bad in, in a, uh, a building. But, uh, here's, and then Schellenberger's first response is to talk about meth heads. I mean, is he suggesting that these are synonymous?

That all homeless people, or the majority of uh, homeless people, are meth heads?

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: They get into it, yeah. Okay, we can go back to that. Yeah, no, it's okay.

MICHAEL SCHELLENBERGER: Uh, well, you know, it turns out meth heads love to start fires. You know, there's just every drug has its kind of [02:06:00] weird element to it, but meth heads love starting fires.

They love destroying things like meth is like the drug of nihilism. So it's like perfect drug for LA and California at the moment.

TUCKER CARLSON: So it's not, these are not cooking fires. They could be cooking fires. Oh, but starting fires to destroy things. Yeah. Oh, for sure. Oh, yeah, for sure It's not evil or anything.

Yeah. No, it's fine. Yeah, what could go wrong? But isn't um, classically starting fires and torturing animals aren't those like signs of sociopathic behavior?

MICHAEL SCHELLENBERGER: Yeah, I mean for sure. I mean look meth makes you psych, you know, it makes you psychopathic. It makes you psychotic It's meth into psychosis But I mean, yeah and all the crazy, I mean people behave, I mean things that people do on meth I mean it is like It's like they behave with like superhuman crazy powers, the levels of violence, the assaults, the, um, I mean, you just, when you interview people, people do a recovery that describe being on meth.

I mean, they're just awake for, like, weeks at a time. Like, it's not even clear how they get anything [02:07:00] at all. So that's just, that madness. Has continued and you know, and Mayor Bass.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I just want to just like remind you how quickly they skipped over the idea of an electrical transformer catching on fire, which we know was the cause of the 2018 massive wildfires.

And we know this happens over Altadena. Like think about how much time they dedicated to Psychoanalyzing. Psychoanalyzing all the meth homeless people who clearly on purpose light fires where there is zero evidence that these, the two most major fires were set on purpose or were from meth heads or from homeless people or from even people at this point.

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: We will. We'll see. I mean, one of the fires, I think Heather said, maybe they think may have been started by [02:08:00] somebody.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: In the Pasadena. But but excuse me, palisades.

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: But do you see how how how far he goes? He immediately jumps to meth heads. So apparently Most of these fires are being started by meth heads. I thought he was going to go in the sense of like, if you're going to use heroin, you may cook it with a lighter.

But then that would preclude, uh, everybody who smokes outside. If you smoke cigarettes, right? That's not included in this analysis. If you smoke cigarettes and drop it on the ground and it's, It's still lit. Like, wouldn't that be in a similar amount of fire that homeless people would be using to cook? No, no, no.

It can't be that, because that would be rational. It has to be that they're meth heads, who are so deranged, they're barely human, honestly, which means we can justify whatever we want to do to them. They're like super soldiers that stay up all day on meth, and they're nihilists trying to cause chaos, burning everything.

That's what he's saying.

MATT LECH: Michael Schellenberger knows that the best defense is a good offense because Michael Schellenberger is exactly the type of liar who has been snowing people on this issue for decades and decades and decades. That's why Elon Musk [02:09:00] picked him to be one of his journalists covering the Twitter files.

More recently, Schellenberger wrote an article where he suggested that while climate change is happening, it's just not the end of the world and not even our most serious environmental problem. His entire bit Is doing this balancing act between climate change is real, but actually capitalists and the people in power and fossil fuel companies, we don't actually need to do about them.

We actually need to listen to them, to how we solve it. He's a liar.

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And he is not saying don't look at climate change, don't look at the fossil fuel executives, don't look up. Let's punch down at the people who are really up to it. The least powerful in society. They don't even have a family member that they can stay with, right?

In many instances Some of these folks are on the street. Some of them I know are experiencing mental health episodes But the reality is is they should be in housing that might make it so that they could have heat

The Politics of Fire - Today, Explained - Air Date 1-14-25

SEAN RAMESWARAM - HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: David Siders is here. He’s an Angeleno, and also a [02:10:00] politics editor at POLITICO, so he’s poised to help us understand how quickly these fires became … political.

DAVID SIDERS: Well, I'd say nearly instantaneously. You had Trump posting about it by Wednesday morning, pointing blame at California leaders.

NEWS NATION: PRESIDENT ELECT DONALD TRUMP: I think that Gavin is largely incompetent and I think the mayor is largely incompetent and probably both of them are just stone cold incompetent. What they've done is terrible.

DAVID SIDERS: Other Republicans talking about Karen Bass, the Los Angeles mayor. And broadly, I think a condemnation by Republicans of, of Democrats. So I think it started within hours.

SEAN RAMESWARAM - HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: What are the arguments that people like Trump – I know his, his vice president, Elon Musk, has opinions, too – what are the arguments they're making?

DAVID SIDERS: I think the most prominent one is also probably the most baseless, which is so interesting and that's about the Delta smelt that he says that Gavin Newsom diverted water to protect this endangered fish.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I've been trying to get Gavin Newsom [02:11:00] to allow water to come. You'd have tremendous water up there. They send it out to the Pacific because they're trying to protect a tiny little fish which is in other areas, by the way, called the smelt. And for the sake of a smelt, they have no water.

DAVID SIDERS: It's a small, not very nice looking fish. And it's just not the case. There are controversies in California, huge ones around the Delta smelt. There's always controversy around water. And it has to do with, I mean, there are restrictions that are meant to protect that fish and also the ecosystem around it.

SEAN RAMESWARAM - HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: And those restrictions may come at the cost of various farmers, for example, in central California.

DAVID SIDERS: You're exactly right. It's about the agriculture interests there, the farmers, and some communities further south.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Can you imagine, you have farmers that don't have any water in California, they have plenty of water, they don't have a drought, they send it out to the Pacific, and it's crazy.

But in this case, authorities have been very clear that the reservoirs were full, that this wasn't an issue of, of turning on the [02:12:00] taps in, in the delta up north.

SEAN RAMESWARAM - HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: And obviously, when firefighters are running out of water, it makes it easier to point fingers. What are the recipients of the pointed fingers saying? Gavin Newsom, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass.

DAVID SIDERS: They're saying that this is disinformation and Newsom's been very aggressive about this.

GOVERNOR GAVIN NEWSOME: Don't know what he's referring to when he talks about the Delta smelt and reservoirs. The reservoirs are completely full, the state reservoirs here in Southern California. That mis- and disinformation, I don't think advantages or aids any of us…

DAVID SIDERS: Local water authorities are saying the same thing. Newsom is also inviting Trump to visit California. So that's the other part of the response, I would say. And then, not a direct response, but one that tacitly acknowledges, I think, the conservative criticism, we saw Newsom sign an executive order suspending some environmental regulations to help streamline rebuilding after the fires.

SEAN RAMESWARAM - HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: And L.A. Mayor Karen Bass has [02:13:00] perhaps been the biggest recipient of blame here. Obviously not helping her case, she was not in the city of Los Angeles when these fires began. And this is after she pledged to not be such an international figure before she took office and maybe once she entered office. How is she responding?

DAVID SIDERS: Yeah, she was been brutalized, too, as you say, for being abroad at the time.

RICK CARUSO: We've got a mayor that's out of the country and we've got a city that's burning and there's no resources to put out fires.

SKYNEWS REPORTER: Do you think you should have been visiting Ghana while this was unfolding back home?

FOX NEWS: How are you not there with your team? Who gives a heck about Ghana?

DAVID SIDERS: She's pushing back in similar ways. She's faced some disinformation too.The fire department budget, for example,

LA MAYOR KAREN BASS: There is not agreement as to whether or not the budget was cut.

DAVID SIDERS: On the other hand, there's been concern for a long time in the area about staffing levels with FD. I think the problem for her with being away is [02:14:00] that she had really cultivated this image of being a mayor who was in the weeds, prioritizing local issues.

FOX 11: Although I was not physically here I was in contact with many of the individuals that are standing here throughout the entire time. When my flight landed, immediately went to the fire zone and saw what happened in Pacific Palisades.

DAVID SIDERS: Not being there at the start, no matter what she says, that hurts. And I think that hurts her image. And even Democrats acknowledge that that's a liability for her.

SEAN RAMESWARAM - HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: So we've been talking about the politics that have arisen in the wake of these fires. But of course, preventing future fires is also a political issue. Where do you think California needs to focus after seeing this, perhaps, again, one of the most destructive fires in its history and certainly in terms of financial [02:15:00] losses, economic losses?

DAVID SIDERS: Well, I think there'll be a lot of immediate things they need to do, right? And some of it we're already seeing, like, they have to finish putting out the fires, right? I mean, that's not done. And they have to do all of that immediate kind of work. And then the midterm stuff like, and this could take a long time, like getting utilities back in place, clearing the lots, demolition. The broader question, I suppose, or some of the broader questions they have to deal with is a land use question first of all, like, and housing. Where to build, how to build, something about resiliency, probably. And then there's this bigger question, too, about climate change and what does not only the state do about that, but then I think if you were a Democratic leader in the state, you're looking for this to be some kind of catalyst for more climate action.

SEAN RAMESWARAM - HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: And yet so much of the talk right now from Gavin Newsom, from, from Karen Bass, from the residents who have lost their homes is about [02:16:00] rebuilding. And I don't want to blame or question these people who have been through this traumatic experience, especially in this moment. But when you hear that and you just think about this rationally, it feels like that may not be the answer because this could just happen again in five, ten, fifteen years, if not sooner. What do you think it takes for us to start talking about how we build houses in this country when it comes to preventing them from being at risk of going down in wildfires?

DAVID SIDERS: Yeah. And not only how, but where. And there has been some criticism online. Why do these people live here? And I think some people grappling with it themselves. You know, yes, we will rebuild, but why are we doing it here? And I, I guess I think about it. Well, first of all, it's a personal decision some people in very high profile ways have made, right? They've left Malibu or they've left the Palisades or [02:17:00] Altadena because of climate change. And many of us in California know people who have, you know, shed investments in this state and looked elsewhere because they see a climate future that looks better somewhere else. I mean, it's tough for a couple of reasons, right? A home is not just four walls. It's where their kids go to school and it's a job. It's also, it comes from an incredible place of privilege, I think, to think, yes, I could move to a different state. Not everybody is in that kind of position. And then ultimately, individual decisions to move somewhere else might be good and rational for them, but that doesn't solve the climate problem. So let's say I go to northern Minnesota or somebody else in this area does. That might be very good for a lot of years, but ultimately that catches up to you, right? Unless there's something done.

I'm sympathetic to the idea that we should be careful about where we build, and jeez, I mean, [02:18:00] people in California knew that tucking themselves into the foothills like this, getting so close to nature, came with this kind of risk. And I think it's only going to get harder now. Think about the fragile insurance market and the regulations and the reality of something like this happening. But I don't think this problem is solved simply by individual decisions to move.

SECTION D: CLIMATE

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally Section D - Climate.

Will 2025 be the Hottest Year Ever Recorded? - ClimateAdam - Air Date 1-13-25

DR. ADAM LEVY - HOST, CLIMATEADAM: The planet was extremely hot in 2024. It shattered the previous record which was set all the way back in, in the previous year, 2023. To be clear, these were the two hottest years since our records began, so over the past century and a half or so. But by piecing together what our planet's been up to over the decades, Distant past.

Climate scientists also reckon 2024 was likely the hottest year since before the last ice age. So that would mean it's been over [02:19:00] a hundred thousand years since the world's been this hot. 2024 was also the first year as a whole where global warming passed 1. 5 degrees celsius. 1. 5 is the limit the world has set itself to try to save the most vulnerable people and ecosystems.

Now, one single year over the limit does not mean we've passed the limit, yet. But it's obvious that we're incredibly close, and that definitely sucks. Now I've had loads of comments asking me about exactly this. Wait, surely we've already passed 1. 5 degrees? What does this limit even mean? Does this mean that global heating is out of control?

And just to answer that last question first, thankfully all the evidence indicates that stopping emitting will still stop the heating. But I'm planning to discuss all this in far more depth in the future. in my next video, which is going to be all about where we stand with the 1. 5 limit [02:20:00] today. Subscribe so you don't miss it, and while you're clicking on things, a like and a comment would be pretty good too.

But why does global average temperature actually matter? What does this temperature even mean? Well, it means a lot, because these global numbers have been Very real consequences on our local human lives. This has come in the form of extreme weather disasters like the downpour in eastern Spain in October that killed hundreds.

Or the heatwave in Mecca in June that claimed over 1, 000 lives. Across the world, humans faced an average of six extra weeks of dangerous heat thanks to climate change. As World Weather Attribution explains, the countries that experience the highest number of dangerous heat days are overwhelmingly small island and developing states who are highly vulnerable and considered to be on the front lines.

of climate change. So [02:21:00] again we see how climate change hits the people who have done the least to cause the problem the hardest. And across the planet, high temperatures have combined with droughts to hit farming and create fuel for wildfires. So to sum up, 2024 was bad for the climate, which means it was bad for us.

So the obvious question is, Will 2025 be even worse? Which begs another obvious question. How can we even begin to answer that first question? While climate scientists don't have some magic crystal ball that allows us to peer into the future, but we do have the answer. Physics. Researchers can piece together the different things that are pushing today's climate out of balance.

That's how we were able to, correctly, predict that 2023 and 2024 would be potential record breakers. And long term climates of climate change. The channel will remember me talking about exactly that in similarly [02:22:00] titled videos over the last two years. By the way, if you appreciate that I predicted the future and did it without selling you all the rubbish you don't need through sponsorship or monetization Well, that's all thanks to incredible patrons like John, whose support keep this channel ticking over.

You can join the Patreon team up here. Okay, but here's the essential science of how we're able to forecast the planet's temperature at the start of the year. The biggest factor pushing our planet's temperature off balance is, surprise, surprise, human emissions. That means all the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, plus the air pollution we're pumping into the atmosphere.

So, as time goes on, and we pump more of those out, the hotter the planet gets. So then, it might sound like the answer's obvious. We've pumped out more of those emissions, So surely 2025 will be hotter than 2024. But humans aren't the only [02:23:00] thing affecting the climate, because we also have to talk about the El Niño Oscillation.

This is a crucial fluctuation in Earth's oceans, where in some years the Pacific's surface is hotter than usual, and in some years cooler. The warm periods are called El Niño, and the cool periods are called La Niña, which translate as little boy and little girl, which Well, it definitely sounds less weird in Spanish.

Anyway, climate scientists are predicting that 2025 will be moving towards the La Niña cooler phase, while the last two years have been dominated by the El Niño warmer phase. And all of that together means that 2025's temperature will probably not be a record breaker. But the UK's Met Office is still predicting 2025 will be one of the three hottest years since records began.

Which, frankly, is bonkers. That this will likely be one of the hottest [02:24:00] years, despite our oceans moving towards their cool phase, well, it just shows how extremely fossil fuels have already heated the planet. And again, this is going to have profound impact. On our lives, whether it's affecting our ability to grow food and access water, or creating more intense and more common extreme weather disasters.

And actually, I said it's going to, but that's probably the wrong. Right now, as I record this, Los Angeles is being threatened by three separate wildfires that are raging across the city, and tens of thousands have been forced to evacuate their homes. So we know that 2025 will be an intense year for the climate, an intense year for us, but it's important we also talk about what we do.

don't know. Because researchers estimate what could happen based on the evidence that we have today. So, disclaimers. We don't [02:25:00] know with certainty what will happen. There's a range on the estimated temperature of 2025. And of course something could happen in 2025 that we just don't know. don't know about yet.

For example, a huge climate altering volcano could go off. And while we're talking about unknown things, I have to come clean about something. You see, I mentioned that climate scientists correctly predicted that 2023 and 2024 would be potential record breakers. But that doesn't mean we got everything right.

Because these weren't just hot like we expected. They were even hotter than we expected. And that's something that climate scientists are working hard to understand. Whether it's just some temporary blip to do with changes in pollution, or even a shift in how the climate itself is operating. It could even be some mix of of all of the above.

Understanding [02:26:00] this is incredibly important

The Great Displacement: Climate Migration in America - Carnegie Endowment - Air Date 3-20-23

JAKE BITTLE: In the end of put the end of 2019. I went to Houston actually to work on an article for a different magazine about this home buyout program where the federal government would give the county money to basically knock down some homes in parts of the city that were perennially prone to flooding.

And the reason I went there was to, like, examine this sort of these, like, miniature ghost towns that had kind of started to appear within the rather dense. Urban fabric of Houston, but while they're, you know, talking to the few holdouts who were left in these places and just sort of examining how strange it was that there were these pockets of emptiness.

I started to think, like, where did everyone go who took this money and left their homes behind? To be destroyed. Um, and nobody, I mean, literally almost nobody could tell me anything about what had happened. FEMA's database of buyout participants was miserable. It was completely broken and incomplete and the county had done almost no work [02:27:00] to track what had happened.

And there was like, maybe 1 academic study about this. So that was where I started was like. You know, we're doing this kind of, um, uncontrolled sort of accidental experiment in letting people move away or in incentivizing them to move away from vulnerable places, but we don't know what works and what doesn't work about it.

And we don't really know how people fare once they leave behind the most vulnerable places and try to find their way to safe shelter elsewhere. So that was the genesis of the project. And it quickly became clear to me that, you know, Even beyond the floodplain home buyout program, there were many kinds of displacement happening and there were many places where after these disasters, you know, thousands of people would find themselves without homes and would make their way to other places.

And in almost no cases was there sustained attention on the long term process of relocation after disasters. So that's what I wanted to. That's what I wanted to do. And when I wrote the story, I ended up with something like 20 times the amount of material that my editor was willing to allow me to [02:28:00] use.

Uh, so. Which was totally defensible, um, , but, uh, I sort of thought, okay, I'll take this and try to do something else with it.

NOAH GORDON - HOST, CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT: Yeah. I wanna ask you later about some of the stuff that didn't make it into the book, but it stuck with me what you just said about most of these displaced US Americans not considering themselves climate refugees.

Did you get the sense that people were overlooking how climate change can drive migration in a prosperous country like the us? I mean, after all, people might be more familiar with how climate drives migration to the us. Citizens of Central American countries are displaced by flooding droughts hurricanes.

JAKE BITTLE: Oh, certainly. Yeah. I mean, I think there's both both parts of the term climate migrant, you know, a lot of people that I spoke to would would have taken issue with or just didn't really apply to themselves. Right? So for the one thing, I mean, a lot of people I spoke with didn't necessarily believe in the science of climate change or didn't necessarily think It was the reason why they had been displaced from their homes.

And a lot of times they could point to other factors in the built environment or other reasons why, you know, they shouldn't have been living where they, where they were. Um, and then migrant [02:29:00] as well, though, I mean, like I said at the start, you know, people would leave behind places that they called home and they would end up making, semi permanent to permanent movements elsewhere.

But because they oftentimes felt stronger connection to the place they'd left behind, and because they, you know, the process of relocation was so messy and took them a while to come to grips with what was happening, they also didn't really think of themselves as migrants, right? Because it wasn't really a matter of, um, A psychological decision taken to leave behind one place in favor of another.

It was like a prolonged struggle, mostly against economic reality, that led them, you know, eventually sort of get budged, sort of shoved somewhere else. And so, yeah, I mean, they all are in some sense of the word climate migrants, but most people don't think about it that way.

NOAH GORDON - HOST, CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT: Let's dive into chapter one.

You've so many memorable characters in this book. One of my favorites is this guy Patrick Garvey, a Canadian man who ends up growing exotic fruits in the low lying Florida Keys. What happens to Patrick Army?

JAKE BITTLE: So [02:30:00] Patrick, um, he spent years, uh, reviving this nursery, uh, this tropical fruit nursery that had been sort of left to die by an old hermit on this island called Big Pine Key.

This was really a place where like misfits, uh, of all kinds could come. It was relatively cheap. Um, most people lived in trailers or underneath elevated homes. It was relatively affordable, even though the keys had gotten quite expensive. And after Hurricane Irma. Hit the keys. It was a high category for hurricane with winds in excess of 150 miles per hour.

It obliterated that island. Um, and then the aftermath of the disaster itself, not only was the fruit grove destroyed, but because of FEMA regulations, you know, Patrick wasn't technically allowed to rebuild on that property. Um, so after years of kind of like, uh, Basically struggling to find a permanent home.

He ended up back there eventually on a new trailer that was slightly different. Um, but it took him years to, to [02:31:00] recover. I mean, his, uh, family left him, uh, his, his wife and kids ended up leaving the keys because it was just too awful there. Um, his friends. A lot of times left, uh, and he kind of went through like a dark night of the soul, this person who had been like a pillar of that community with a really truly like a public resource in that nursery, just struggled along for for years.

And even when I spoke with him, 4 or 5 years after the disaster, he wasn't quite sure that he was going to be able to stay. He was just kind of coming to grips with the fact that, like, There was always the possibility of another storm. Sea level rise is advancing quite quickly there. It's unclear whether the grove might be subject to inundation from subterranean penetration of groundwater.

He was, he was really, really unsure, and it really unmoored him, um, and I thought it was really powerful that a person, this was the only place that he had ever really belonged, I think that's what he felt, um, had been, while never actually leaving the island, he had been completely, [02:32:00] you know, knocked out of his life, um, and all the things that he had found that kind of solved the problems of his life were then Taken from him.

Um, and it didn't seem like it was possible to recover. That was like the reality, which is a really difficult one to face I think.

NOAH GORDON - HOST, CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT: Yeah, it was certainly a poignant story. And I liked in your response. I mean, I think it's in the introduction to the book. You split up the different drivers of climate migration.

There's the one we maybe all think about, like the severe acute weather disasters, but also government policy. Like you mentioned, buyouts in flood prone areas of North Carolina, the private housing market insurance policy, like after the fires in California. Yeah. And then this sort of slow motion long term displacement as we see in Arizona and Virginia with flooding, erosion, and water scarcity.

Let's maybe go north a few states and use a term that makes people angry, managed retreat. Um, before I read the book, I had heard of the managed retreat away from Ile de Jean Charles in Louisiana, which I thought, I think is the first instance of an entire community receiving federal tax dollars to move away from an area threatened by climate change.

But I didn't know the story of Lincoln City, a mostly black community that thrived in Eastern North Carolina until [02:33:00] 1999. So. How is Lincoln City threatened by climate change? And how did the government respond there?

JAKE BITTLE: Yeah, so Lincoln City was built on really, really flood prone land. It was land that, um, the, the white planters, uh, in Kinston, North Carolina, after the Civil War, they just did not want to develop on it, um, because it was too prone to flooding.

But a group of descendants of formerly enslaved people, uh, did found a town there. Um, and in the nineties, after two successive hurricanes in four years, the federal government decided to, you know, give some money for basically the first iteration of the bio program that I described in Houston, they gave the county money to instead of, you know, I thought, okay, we don't have the homes in this neighborhood aren't worth enough, uh, for us to build a flood wall or build a dam or something or elevate them, you know, elevate in the homes would cost more than, you know, Each home was worth was the conclusion.

So they said, well, our only option is to knock all the homes down and get people money to go somewhere else. And this was like, this is a program that was really designed for use in agricultural communities along the [02:34:00] Mississippi River places where there was not too much housing density. And, you know, there was like, not too many people in general.

And this is the 1st time. Or one of the first times it had been deployed for an urban community, certainly, or on the scale that it was deployed about 1000 people. And this was a devastating, devastating event for it was far more devastating than the hurricanes for the people who lived in this community.

They were all sort of, like, scattered to the wind. Most of them ended up in foreclosure in their new homes, because the money that was given out was not sufficient to handle the problem. The payments on a more expensive home. And I think people to this day, 20, 25 years later is still discussed as, as like, uh, you know, a racialized crime by this white government to basically dissolve a neighborhood where people felt it.

Yeah. You know, really, really secure. It was like the only neighborhood of its kind in that city and the government just didn't see fit to protect it. Uh, that was the perception and they just bought everyone out. And, you know, most of them ended up far worse off. So this is like manage retreat, [02:35:00] right? Is, uh, in some ways productive term that people, I think, need to think about because it's, We've built in a lot of places where we shouldn't have, right?

Right on the beachfront in North Carolina or, you know, Florida. And then, you know, in the deep, you know, fire prone hills of California. I think it's productive and necessary for us to think about. Well, how do we stop just rebuilding in these places over and over and over again? But what I was kind of what I kind of came away with from this Chapter in Lincoln City was that, you know, in the few places where we've tried this, it doesn't work.

You know, it's, it leads to a lot of pain, you know, so this thing, that's like, you know, the most cost effective tool for responding to climate change, just get people out of the way it has a lot of deep and, uh, troublesome implications.

Climate Scientist Peter Kalmus Fled L.A. Fearing Wildfires. His Old Neighborhood Is Now a Hellscape - Deomcracy Now! - Air Date 1-10-25

PETER KALMUS: The reason I wrote the piece was because we have to acknowledge that this is caused by the fossil fuel industry, which has been lying for almost half a century, blocking action. They’re on the record saying that they will continue to [02:36:00] spread disinformation and continue to attempt to block action. They’ve known the whole time that the planet would get hotter like this and that impacts like this fire would happen.

And then, something I really wanted — a point I really wanted to make in the piece, which they wouldn’t let me make, is that this is still just the beginning. It’s going to get way worse than this. Two years ago — well, 2020, when the Bobcat Fire happened, the whole time I was living in Altadena, it was getting hotter and more fiery and drier and smokier. And it just didn’t feel like I could stay there. Like, I could — you know, when you have a trendline, things getting worse every year — right? — like, where’s the point where something — where it breaks? You know, like, you keep going, keep pushing the system, getting hotter and hotter, getting drier and drier — right? — like, emitting more and more carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels, eventually things break. I didn’t expect [02:37:00] my neighborhood to burn this soon.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Explain what’s happened, Peter, in Altadena, in the town that you left.

PETER KALMUS: It’s complete devastation. I mean, your audience probably has seen some of the images. The neighborhood I lived is gone. I would say the majority of my friends have lost their homes there. Every now and then, there’s a home that’s still standing amidst the ashes and the devastation. I don’t even know what kind of rebuilding after this is going to look like and feel like. I don’t know how this is going to affect the housing market, the insurance industry going forward.

The thing, again, you know, I think everyone needs to understand, and I wish The New York Times would have let me make this point, that this is going to [02:38:00] get worse. I can see that today just as clearly as I could see how hotter and drier and more fiery Los Angeles was getting. I mean, I think, in the future, if we don’t change course very quickly — and maybe it’s even too late to avoid some of these much more catastrophic impacts, but I am fully expecting heat waves to start appearing where 100,000 people die, and then maybe a million people die, and then maybe more after that, as things get hotter and hotter, because there’s no — there’s no upper limit, right? Like, we keep burning these fossil fuels. The fossil fuel industry keeps lying. The planet just keeps getting hotter. These impacts just keep getting worse.

It’s not a new normal. A lot of climate messaging centers around this idea that it’s a new normal. It’s a staircase to a hotter, more hellish Earth. And, you know, a lot of climate impact predictions have erred on the side of least drama. It’s hard [02:39:00] for even scientists to wrap our heads around how everything is changing right now on planet Earth. No matter where you look, the indicators — you know, when spring comes, how hot the winter is, habitats that are moving, ice that’s melting — everywhere you look in the Earth system, including, of course, ocean temperatures and land surface temperatures, you’re just on this trend towards a hotter planet and all of the impacts that are associated with it. And I don’t know what it’s going to take for us to stop all these stupid wars and come together and actually deal with the emergency that our planet is in the process of becoming less and less habitable and everything that means. We, humanity, we’ve got a real crisis here, and we’re ignoring it.

You know, another paragraph they took out of the piece, both the Democratic presidents, Obama, President Obama, and President Biden, they were [02:40:00] very proud to expand fossil fuels. President Obama said, you know, “All that oil and gas expansion, that was me, people” — right? — right after he was done being president, at a lecture he gave at Rice University. And now, of course, we have a Republican president coming into office who says this is a hoax, who’s gaslighting the people who are following him. Like, I don’t know how long it’s going to take for conservative working-class people to believe what’s right in front of their eyes, that the planet is getting hotter, and that we have to come together and stop listening to these clowns who say it’s a hoax. I mean, look at — it’s all around us. Why do I have to be on Democracy Now! saying this? Right? It’s very obvious what’s happening.

L.A. Fires Should Be a Climate Wake-Up Call: 5 Dead, 130K+ Evacuated in Uncontained "Apocalypse" - Democracy Now! - Air Date 1-9-25

SONALI KOLHATKAR: You don't expect that you're going to be in the middle of a disaster that captures international attention. And in my sleepy town of North Pasadena, [02:41:00] I'm just two blocks from Altadena. That's precisely what has happened. Um, we heard the winds rattling in the middle of the night of more ferocious than they've ever been.

We knew that we hadn't had rain in hundreds of days. And, um, you know, we have our neighborhood chat group and people started talking about whether they should up and leave. I have 2 elderly disabled parents and I decided that I would evacuate them before the official evacuation notice came. And already the hotels were filling up on Monday night.

Um, you know, we luckily had power, but many of our neighbors didn't. And we've been holed up at this hotel. All the hotels are packed. The conventions that are up the street is packed. It's just devastating. 1100 businesses in Altadena. This community of, of incredible people has been evacuated. Utterly devastated the speed, the ferocity with which these winds have blown.

The fires has been hard to [02:42:00] imagine. I went back yesterday to get my father's medications because he's a diabetic and we couldn't find his meds at the pharmacies and I just, you know, risked it, went home and grabbed the medication. The air was thick with smoke and ash raining down and all I could think of was this house that I've lived in for more than half my life.

Is still standing, but I don't know if it's going to be standing tomorrow or the day after. And, you know, my husband and I, Jim and I went back there and we thought, you know, should be hosed it down, but then it'll take water from the firefighters. Um, the air is so bad right now that I'm sitting in a hotel lobby miles away from the fires and the internal air is hard to breathe and I'm having to use a mask.

Um, it is just. Unbelievable. I feel like it is a nightmare. And I have more than 12 people in my 13 people and counting now in my network of friends who have just lost their homes. And I know many more have that I'm not even aware of absolutely lost their homes. I saw [02:43:00] some of them on Saturday at my birthday party and now their homes are gone and I can't even believe it.

Picture that and I don't know if I will have a home tomorrow or the day after because these winds are not over. They're dry. They're rushing through ferociously. The firefighters are overstretched. They were fire trucks that were speeding past burning homes. Because they didn't have enough firefighters to stop and put out the fires there.

And so some people are staying because they think that if they make a stand, they can, you know, save their homes. They're risking their lives. And it's a tempting prospect because your whole life is in your home. What do I do with my parents and my kids if I don't have a home to go back to tomorrow, the day after?

I don't know. This is It's just, um, it's mind blowing. It's devastating. And no one's talking about climate change in the media. No one's talking about it. And it's just, you know, it's frustrating. So just if you believe in [02:44:00] in a God pray for us.

NERMEEN SHAIKH - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: So John Valiant, could you respond to these devastating accounts that Sonali has just given us of what's happening and what she herself and her family have experienced as they've had to flee and talk about this issue, the issue of Climate change.

You've spoken about this concept of wild land, urban interface and why we all have to understand what that means.

JOHN VAILLANT: Yeah. Good morning, Nermeen and Sunali. I'm really, really sorry to hear what you're going through. And, um, this might be cold comfort, but I've spent the last eight years.

I've been in the business for a number of years studying fires like this and talking to people who gone through what what you're going through right now, many of whom lost their homes. Ultimately. We're in a situation now we're realizing or or or LA residents are waking up to the fact that, that the climate really owns our communities.

It [02:45:00] owns our landscape and and L. A. County. You know what the most populous urban region in the country is now literally at the mercy. And it's at the mercy of climate. And as, uh, um, Sunali said, it's desperately dry there and the winds are still blowing and the winds control these fires. Uh, so the, um, despite the fact that California is famous for its devastating fires and has lost thousands and thousands of homes over the past 30 years to major fires, just like these, it's still shocking when it happens to you.

I think all of us human beings are defended against that possibility, even when it's happening all around us. And in this case, in other parts of California. Now, it's L. A. County's a moment to experience this and, and nothing really prepares you for the, the kind of psychic and physical assault. Of these [02:46:00] kinds of fires and and this notion of the wild land urban interface known to firefighters as the WUI is that place where the wild land, you know, the hills of the San Gabriel Mountains, San Fernando Valley, but up against the built environment, the places where we live and increasingly very powerful fires are coming into cities into urban spaces from these wild lands.

And the interface is where they meet and what is really alarming. And it's another thing people don't talk about is what excellent fuel the modern houses. So these wildfires are raging through forest, which is natural. Their fire is a normal part of the California landscape. But coming into these built environments, houses nowadays, the modern house has so many petroleum products in it in terms of vinyl siding and formica counters and polyurethane stuffing and the rubber tires and the gas tanks in the garage.

There are [02:47:00] all kinds of explosive petroleum products built into our lives that we don't even think about. Look at what your shoes are made out of when they get hot enough. They are explosively flammable. It sounds crazy. It's ridiculous, but it's true. And if you start looking around at your home, you'll realize that petroleum and its products are everywhere.

And these are really, really flammable. And in the case of L. A. County right now, the other kind of sort of secret, um, uh, accelerant is humidity and you're down close to 0 percent humidity, which is drier than kindling drier than a matchstick. And now you have entire communities that are this dry. So the fire has to do very little work to get going.

And it's got these sometimes 50, 80 mile an hour winds fanning, not just fanning the flames, but really turning them into blow torches blowing through these communities. It's devastating energy. Firefighters can't really fight it. And that's why you have [02:48:00] such a low percentage of containment on these massive fires that have already done colossal damage.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And yet, john, you have the media and I'm not just talking Fox. I'm talking about all the networks. They'll talk about the perfect storm that's going on now. The high winds, extremely dry weather, especially since October. October, but they won't talk about climate change. The weather center should be renamed climate change centers.

But this hesitance to link it to the rest of the world and to this global heating that's happening right now and what it would mean for policy as a new president comes in, whose main motto is drill baby drill.

JOHN VAILLANT: Yeah, there's a real moral cowardice, um, in evidence at the government level, at the media level.

Yeah. Uh, there is there is no doubt about the hand in hand connection between our obsession with fossil fuel burning, which goes back, you know, for 200 years now, and [02:49:00] the alterations in the climate in terms of the buildup of heat trapping CO2 and methane and were they those companies and government and the governments and banks who enable them to acknowledge this.

They would have to change their business model and this kind of blind, frankly, suicidal loyalty to the status quo of keeping fossil fuels preeminent in our energy system is creating an increasingly difficult situation and unlivable situation. And I think, you know, some billionaires were impacted over the past couple of days, billionaires who encourage these policies.

And yet, uh, the, in the, in their inclination is to blame. Uh, the mayor to blame the governor for conditions that predate either of their administrations. And so we're really what we're living in right now is an increasingly [02:50:00] shrill dissonance between the fact of climate change, the science of climate change, which is well understood by NOAA by NASA by many brave meteorologists who are on television and on the radio.

and the governments who are serving really handmaidens, uh, to the petroleum industry and to the investors who are dependent on keeping them in business.

How to Beat Climate Change with Aru Shiney-Ajay - Factually! with Adam Conover - Air Date 1-15-25

the Biden administration actually did get some work done on climate change with the Inflation Reduction Act, which is the largest climate change bill ever passed. Obviously it had plenty of problems, but it was still a large achievement.

So just tell me a little bit about your view of, you know, the progress that's been made specifically over the last couple of years and how have you guys contributed to it? Do you, is there anything in that bill or anything else where you're like, ah, we got that in there. Yeah. I mean, [02:51:00] Honestly, I don't think the bill would have happened if it weren't for sunrise and groups like sunrise.

Climate was good. Take some fucking credit. Yeah, I know. They call it in the media. I remember they would call it like Joe Manchin's climate bill. And I've always been like, that was not Joe Manchin's was youth climate strikers. Um, and obviously he had way too much influence over it. So I get why they called it that, but it was ours that we started and we put forward.

Um, I mean, yeah. I remember in 2018, right before we raised arrest in Nancy Pelosi's office, there was this headline of that. I think the words were something like Dems damp down hope on climate, and they had just taken the house on. There was a clear like mandate for climate. A lot of young people were talking about climate action and house leadership was like, Yeah, no, this isn't a priority.

It's not political winner. And that is part of what actually made us do that sit in of saying like, no, we put you in office, we're delivering you a mandate and you better deliver. Um, and that turned into like mass [02:52:00] climate strike energy in 2019, like hundreds of thousands of people walking out of their classes, um, that turned into the green new deal.

It turned into every single presidential candidate starting to talk about climate change as a core part of their platform. And even saying the words green new deal. We end up winning a climate town hall where candidates were racing against each other, um, to prove their credentials. And I think one of the biggest interventions we made is back in 2017, 2016, um, the debate around climate change was really framed as around, do you want a healthy economy or do you want to stop, uh, stop climate change or do you want to save the environment?

And we really cut through a lot of that and said, Those just aren't oppositional things like the amount of work like physical work needed to stop. The climate crisis is huge. There's no way that you don't create jobs while stopping the climate crisis. And we really made that intervention. And I think that's one of the biggest things that the IRA was built off of.

You see Joe Biden saying things like when I think about climate, I think [02:53:00] about jobs. Um, the IRA was a huge investment in unions. It meant that unions were able to stand with climate interests for the first time in a long time. Uh, so I, I think there was a lot in there that Sunrise really enabled. Yeah, and I think that perspective shift is really important because so often, uh, climate change is framed as to fight climate change.

We all need to get by with less. We need to cut back. We need to have worse lives to save the planet. And first of all, whether or not that's true, I don't think it is true, but it's also a political loser. If you frame it that way, people don't want there to be less of that. I don't want there to be less of things.

We want more of everything. And so framing climate change as we can fight climate change and have better lives, a healthier economy, a more flourishing, uh, civilization, but it'll also have less pollution. It'll have better weather. It'll have less climate disasters, et cetera. Uh, that, that's a, that's a vision that's really possible and that you're helping make clear to people.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that there's a lot of things people talk about [02:54:00] college being one of the best times in their lives. They talk about wanting walkable cities. Like those are climate solutions. Spend more time hanging out with your friends and less time, like. Scrolling for buying things on Tik Tok shop.

That's also helpful for climate. There's like a lot of pieces of like people's lives can be more full and happier. Um, and okay, but I like Tik Tok. I was just on Tik Tok before. Okay. Okay. Good, good, good. I mean, you know, you want to let people still have to be able to make their own choices. No, absolutely.

And we want that. We want the good things in life as at the same time that we want to fight climate change. Um, and so look, the inflation reduction act passed. There was a lot of great stuff in there. It was like truly one of the times I felt optimistic about the future in a way I hadn't before. Or I hadn't in a long time now we are entering a different political moment.

There's a new regime coming in that does not believe in climate change that in fact is [02:55:00] basically the entire premise of the of the incoming administration is that we should move back to the past. Uh, that anything, anyone who wants to do anything to take us into the future is wrong. That's bad. They're trying to take away your incandescent light bulbs.

We're going to go back to incandescent light bulbs. We're going to go back to burning fossil fuels, et cetera. That's the sort of ideological and emotional slant of the administration. And we still have a lot of work to do to fight. Climate change. We're still gonna rocket past, you know, the various thresholds that we want to avoid in terms of warming.

So how are you adjusting to fit this moment? And what is your what is your analysis of the moment of the moment that we're in vis a vis climate change? Yeah, I mean, I think the thing you said of it's a society. It's a ideology that wants to take us backwards. It's really interesting because The only thing that the Democrats really offered in opposition to that was we are not going back.

And I think what climate change and the Green New Deal offers is we can actually go forward and not [02:56:00] just not go backwards. That is such a great point. That is such a great point. The slogan that Kamala and Walls used. We're not going back. Pretty good slogan. It's okay. But it begs the question. Okay, but so where are we going?

Exactly. Where do you want to go? Do you want to stay right here? Because right here is not great. Are we on our way somewhere? And what's the vision? And that's what they didn't do. Mike, I've never actually heard it put better than that, that you really crystallized the entire problem with the Democratic campaign there, uh, opposition to the other party.

But what the fuck do you want to do? Where are we going? Exactly. And I think that's what climate offers is like, there can be a hopeful version of the future where we tackle our problems. And we have better lives, which is what we were just talking about, right? Um, but, but you, you asked about the moment that we're in, in terms of climate, I mean, I don't want to understate the threat that Trump poses.

Um, I think just looking at his, some of his cabinet picks is already so concerning, um, Lee Zeldin for the EPA, Chris [02:57:00] Wright as energy secretary. Chris Wright is literally an oil billionaire. Like this is crazy. Has a vested interest in expanding oil and gas. Um, and we should see that for what it is, which is like corruption in our, in, in, in our higher offices, uh, it's running the federal government.

There's an oil company running. Yeah, right. And Trump really built himself as like this work, you know, for the working class, for everyday people, the first time he ran on drain the swamp. This is the opposite of that, which I think is really important to name. It's not just that we disagree with each other on policy.

It's that. The people with money who have an interest in not letting us stop climate change are the ones in power because they are able to spend that money and get access to power. So that's what I'll start with is I'm like, it's really, really dangerous. The one thing that I'll say, um, and you know, oh my gosh, half full type of person.

I think there's a big opportunity here. And that is that. In some ways, [02:58:00] I think we're about to see a moment where the failures of our political system are really laid bare for everyone to see it'll be very clear very soon that Trump cannot deliver on a lot of the promises he made because he ran saying, like, life is bad for you, and I'm gonna make it better.

And he just won't be able to make it better in the ways that he has promised you. And when that happens, I think there's a real way to talk about climate and also talk about working people and talk about how we can make people's lives better and offer an alternative vision. I think the reason climate plays a really cute role in that is that it's actually one of the places where Trump and the movement is most out of sync with where most people are.

Most people do actually think that we should slowly phase out of fossil fuels. Most people do definitely think that we need clean air and clean water, especially when the message comes from young people. It's tremendously popular to actually act on climate action. Um, and The Republican Party just doesn't have an answer to that.

They have [02:59:00] no answer whatsoever. And especially in moments of climate disasters, I think that is going to be like torn wide open for people to see. So that's some of what I see is I'm like, it's really bad. I don't want to understate how bad it is, but I think there's a way to actually take this crisis and use it to point to the degree of change we need and also like vision and possibility that there is.

Living in the Time of Dying - Watch Full Documentary - Air Date 10-1-22

MICHAEL SHAW: What brings me here, is the paper that you wrote in July 18, Deep Adaptation. And You made a very strong statement in that about what you saw that was going on and, um,

JEM BENDELL: what did you see that was going on? Yeah. So I concluded that, uh, climate change is much worse than what we've been told already and that there were signs that it's now already has its own momentum.

So these. These feedbacks which will further heat the planet, uh, they, they've already started, like, uh, the melting of the permafrost releasing [03:00:00] methane, which warms the planet much faster than carbon dioxide. Or forest fires, uh, more frequent and more wide ranging than ever before, also therefore producing more carbon.

The soil's drying, producing more carbon. The ice sheets are melting. shrinking and therefore reflecting less light back to space and absorbing more into the oceans. So these are the, these self reinforcing feedbacks, which were, it's quite obvious now that they're happening. And that means that climate change is speeding up.

Our emissions are also speeding up. No matter what we've been doing, carbon dioxide 1850 every year and at an increasing rate. So, all this together, it was really scary. But the other side of it was then looking at what that would mean for our way of [03:01:00] life. Um, so often we'd, I'd read about this is going to be really bad for our children or grandchildren, or this is going to be really bad for particularly vulnerable communities in poor countries, perhaps living in hurricane zones or whatever.

Uh, and then I actually realized that this was going to damage. our own lives. When I say our own, I meant, you know, me living in a western person, middle class life, that this is, this is coming for me and people like me in my lifetime. So we're going to need to be much more public, uh, about that there's difficulty ahead.

Um, so the message has to become millions of people are suffering right now. It's worse than we were told. We are now in danger. We must do all that we can to try and slow the problem down. But we must now also [03:02:00] do all that we can to help each other through this. And it's that final bit which is not being said publicly yet.

MICHAEL SHAW: In the other scientists reports that I've read, no one spoke like that. And it's certainly got me thinking in entirely different ways out, outside of the science and outside of the CO2 and the melting ice and into, oh, how's this going to be in my life? But I also know you had a really hard time publishing that.

It wasn't simple for you. Could you just talk about what process you went through to get that out there? Okay.

JEM BENDELL: So I, I wrote it, but I felt that I couldn't do it unless I fully expressed the truth as I, as I saw it. So I wasn't surprised when the anonymous reviewers, that's the process for peer review, came back and they said, There's lots of good things in here, but it's not appropriate for a number of reasons, and one of the reasons was that it, [03:03:00] uh, it, it, you should not be concluding that it's too late to stop catastrophic climate change, um, and also that's going to be quite troubling for the readers.

Um, I couldn't, and the request to, to change it to make it suitable for publication would have stripped it of the emotion and, and also the, the reason. My own conclusion, which is that this isn't in doubt now. The only way one can say it's in doubt is if one chooses to stick to certain sort of paradigm of knowledge that, you know, we can never be exactly certain about anything in the future.

But I realized that gives you some kind of psychological emotional escape. Say, oh, well, this might not be the case. Oh, we can't be absolutely certain. And that kind of helps you calm down. And I thought, well, that's. That's not my truth. I mean, this is, to me, this is certain now, and it opens up a whole new set of questions once you decide that [03:04:00] it's certain that climate is going to really ruin our way of life.

I'm encouraging us to think about what it might mean for local government and national government to start to get ready.

MICHAEL SHAW: I could also feel this growing urgency to get ready for the days ahead, both practically and emotionally. But in order to do so as a world community, we have to start accepting the science and acting as if it's real.

Yet in doing just that, it seems to come with this label of being a doomer.

JEM BENDELL: Yeah, I understand. I mean, years ago, if I heard what's called the doomer view, I would think, Ah, but we, we must try and stop that happening. Um, for me, uh, hearing a Doomer view would be impetus to try and cut carbon emissions and draw down carbon emissions.

Um, and be more, um, bold and ambitious and innovative and how we might do that. [03:05:00] So I understand people who are allergic to hearing the view that it's too late to stop a disastrous amount of climate change and how that's going to make our societies fall apart. Um, but I think they're wrong. Um, for a whole range of reasons.

The first one is that people do not need a fairy tale future, a story of a fairy tale future in order to be motivated. We've seen that with the explosion of Extinction Rebellion around the world. Extinction Rebellion, the founders, and I know them and I've been involved since the start, they're very clear that We are in a dreadful, perilous situation and we must do all that we can to give ourselves a better chance.

So, yeah, I, I think the argument that this is somehow going to lead to apathy, despair or depression, and not engagement on the [03:06:00] agenda to cut carbon or draw down carbon, I think is just wrong. And there's also Um, environmental psychology published to show that's wrong as well. It's that if somebody feels that climate change is now, and it's close to home, they're way more likely to do something about it, than if it's somewhere in the future affecting somewhere else, somewhere hot, and poorer than, than where they're living.

It's too late to change this system. We have to be brave enough to admit to ourselves that we have to have a different kind of conversation about what to do next. Even if it feels like we have no idea what that means, we have to be brave enough to start that conversation.

MICHAEL SHAW: This felt true to me. We have to be brave enough to start these conversations because if we don't, how are we even going to start to get ready?

It does seem, however, like more and more people are willing to at least begin having it.

DAHR JAMAIL: Yes, it's very scary and it [03:07:00] brings up a lot of despair and a lot of feelings of hopelessness. Yes. So, is it not our job as adults to process through that, understand that, and now then ask some of the deeper, harder questions of, Okay, so now what am I really going to do?

And how then shall we live? And how are we going to be during this time?

Naomi Klein on Our Hotter, Meaner Future, and How to Avoid It - Moyers on Democracy - Air Date 2-3-16

MICHAEL WINSHIP: How does this change everything?

NAOMI KLEIN: The this and this changes everything is climate change. Um, and, and the argument that I make in the book, uh, is, um, that we find ourselves in this moment where there are no non radical options. left before us change or be changed, right? This, uh, and and what we mean by that is that climate change, um, if we don't change course, if we don't change our political and economic system is going to change everything about our physical world.

And that [03:08:00] is what climate scientists are telling us when they say business as usual leads to three to four degrees of warming, three to four degrees Celsius warming. Um, that's the road we're on. We can get off that road, but we're now so far along that we've put off the crucial policies for so long that now we can't do it gradually.

We have to swerve, right? And um, and swerving requires such a radical departure from the kind of political and economic system we have right now that we pretty much have to change everything. We have to change. Um, the kind of free trade deals we sign. Um, we would have to change the absolutely central role of frenetic consumption in our cultures.

We would have to change the role of money in politics and our political system. We would have to change our attitude. Towards regulating corporations, um, we would have to change [03:09:00] our guiding ideology. We, you know, since the 80s, we've been living in this era, really, of corporate rule, based on this idea that the role of government is to liberate, um, the, the, the, the, the power of capital, so that they, they can, uh, um, you know, have as much, um, Economic growth as quickly as possible, and then all good things will flow from that.

Um, and that is what justifies privatization, deregulation, um, cuts to corporate taxes, offset by cuts to public services. All of this is incompatible with what we need to do in the face of the climate crisis. We need to invest massively in the public sphere to have a renewable energy system, to have good public transit and rail.

Um, and that is what we You know, that money needs to come from somewhere. So it's going to have to come from the people who have the money. And, and, and, you know, I actually believe it's deeper than that, that it, that, that it is, um, it's about changing the, the, the, the paradigm [03:10:00] of a culture that is based on.

separateness from nature that is based on the idea that we can dominate nature, that we are the boss, that we are in charge. Climate change challenges all of that. Um, it says, you know, all this time that you've been living in this bubble apart from nature that has been fueled by a substance that all the while has been, um, um, you know, accumulating in the atmosphere and you told yourself you were the boss.

You told yourself that you could have a one way relationship with the natural world. But now comes the response. And it does say, you know, you thought you were in charge? Like, think again. And we, you know, we can either mourn our status as boss of the world um, and see it as some cosmic demotion which is why I think And I think the sort of extreme right is so freaked out by climate change that they have to deny it.

It isn't just that it is a threat to their profits, it's a threat to a whole world view that says, you know, you have dominion over [03:11:00] all things. And, and that's extremely threatening.

MICHAEL WINSHIP: Well, you know, I was just thinking that in 2012, just after Sandy, uh, Bloomberg Business Week published a cover story. Yeah.

And the cover said, it's global warming, stupid. And, and now here we are, two of us sitting here the day after a massive snowfall on the Atlantic seaboard. Um, what's that telling you, me and the rest of us?

NAOMI KLEIN: That were really stupid?

MICHAEL WINSHIP: That were really stupid. Exactly.

NAOMI KLEIN: But, you know, I mean, I do think that that was a turning point, um, that Sandy was a turning point.

You know, if you look at, at, at the, the polling around climate change in this country before Sandy, um, that was kind of the low point in terms of Americans believing that climate change was real and that humans were causing it. And, I mean, I think that just. There have been so many messages, um, you know, whether it's the California drought, the, you know, and, and the [03:12:00] wildfires or, you know, the flooding that, you know, we just saw in the, in the, in the American South, it's just getting harder and harder to deny that there's something really, really strange going on.

And this is why, why I think we have a structural problem. You can simultaneously understand The medium to long term risks of climate change and also come to the conclusion that is in your short term economic interest to invest in oil and gas. Which is why, you know, anybody who tells you that the market is going to fix this on its own is lying to you.

MICHAEL WINSHIP: And I've always been struck too by the military's embrace of the reality of climate change. You know, they've been warning us for years about this because that's why they're going to have to fight a lot of the time.

NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah. Yeah, and I think that's becoming clear and clear as well. Um, because you know, and I have to give credit to John Kerry in terms of the fact that he's been out front making the connection between the civil war in Syria and climate change that that before the [03:13:00] outbreak of the pandemic.

Civil War, Syria experienced the worst drought in its history, and that led to an internal migration of between 1. 5 and 2 million people. And when you have that kind of massive internal migration, um, it exacerbates tension in an already tense place. In addition to that, beforehand, you have the invasion of Iraq.

Um, which also had a little something to do with climate change in the sense that it was a war, um, that had maybe a little something to do with oil, which, um, you know, is one of the substances causing climate change.

Credits

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: That's going to be it for today, as always keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about today's topic or our upcoming topics. We're going to be looking at be tenuous ceasefire in Israel, as well as some other updates in the region, followed by a big picture perspective on the changing landscape of international politics, under a second Trump administration.

You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at (202) 999-3991. You can now reach us on the privacy focused messaging app Signal, [03:14:00] at the user name BestOfTheLeft.01, there's a link in the show notes for that as well. Or simply email me to [email protected].

The additional sections of the show included clips from Disorder, More Perfect Union, Counter Spin, The Bitchuation Room, The Muckrake Political Podcast, Some More News, The Majority Report, Today Explained, ClimateAdam, Living in the Time of Dying, Factually!, Moyers on Democracy, Democracy Now!, and The Carnegie Endowment. Further details are in the show notes. Thanks everyone for listening.

Thanks to Deon Clark and Erin Clayton for their research work for the show and participation in our bonus episodes. Thanks to our transcriptionist quartet Ken, Brian, Ben, and Lara for their volunteer work, helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work behind the scenes and her bonus show co-hosting.

And thanks to all those who support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships. You can join them by signing up today at BestOfTheLeft.com/Support, through our Patreon [03:15:00] page or from right inside the apple podcast app. Membership is how you get instant access to our incredibly good and often funny weekly bonus episodes. In addition to there being no ads and chapter markers in all of our regular episodes, all through your regular podcast player. You'll find that link in the show notes, along with a link to join our Discord community, where you can also continue the discussion. And don't forget to follow us on any and all new social media platforms you might be joining these days.

So coming to you from far outside the conventional wisdom of Washington DC, my name is Jay, and this has been the Best of the Left podcast coming to you twice weekly. Thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show from BestOfTheLeft.com.

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#1685 Faux Populism and Neoliberalism: Working People Are Stuck Between Oligarchy and Disregard (Transcript)

Posted by · January 21, 2025 1:43 PM

Air Date 1/21/2025

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award winning Best of the Left Podcast. Decades ago, the conscious decision was made to exacerbate any quality for the sake of economic growth that would supposedly lift all boats. What probably wasn't understood at the time is that the logical conclusion of that choice would be to break democracy and usher in oligarchy. Now, working people are left with only bad choices and empty promises.

For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our top takes in about 50 minutes today includes Confronting Capitalism, The Majority Report, Pitchfork Economics, Lever Time, The Marc Steiner Show, and The Dig. Then, in the additional deeper dives half of the show, there'll be more in four sections. Section A: Party Reckoning; Section B: Neoliberal Stranglehold; Section C: Crossed Wires with a Focus on the Reorganization of the Republican Party; and Section D: Solutions.

Workers Without a Party - Confronting Capitalism - Air Date 12-11-24

MELISSA NASCHEK: One thing that you really point out in [00:01:00] your recent Jacobin article is a huge contradiction that this wing of the party is is going to have to confront or potentially continue losing.

So you write in your article that the Democratic Party is kind of putting an increasing amount of distance between itself and the working class. And the interesting thing that happened compared to 2016—there were some roots and signs of it there, but this dynamic really manifested in this election, in 2024—is that now this working class alienation is not just with the white working class that was so heavily demonized in 2016, but that working class alienation is extending across racial lines now.

What do you think are the roots of the Democratic Party's increasing alienation from the working class?

VIVEK CHIBBER - HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: I mean, some of [00:02:00] these roots, I think, are not specific to the United States, they're specific to the political economy of advanced capitalism generally. And what that particular dynamic is, is that on the one hand, all the parties of the left within Europe, within the antipodes in the United States and Canada, all these parties have over the past 50 years shifted from being parties that fought for the interests of working people and then tried to manage the institutional constraints of capitalism.

They've transformed from that to being essentially managerial parties that are much more attuned to the preferences and the interests of the corporate class, and really are increasingly distancing themselves from their historical constituencies, which is the working class.

And you see across the board, workers losing confidence that these parties represent them, and one of two things that's been happening. They either are opting out of politics altogether. You see this everywhere. [00:03:00] working class people are just becoming so cynical that they are simply not taking part in the political process. And the others are shifting to alternatives, whoever they think might actually fight for them.

So the one root of this alienation has been the generic phenomenon of all the center left or left wing parties becoming managerial parties. Now in the United States, it has a particular trajectory. If you look at the historical Turnout and the electoral preferences of voters, there's been a decline in their voting for the Democrats or identifying in terms of their political identification with the Democrats really since I would say the late 70s it started to weaken, but there've been two really important episodes.

One was the mid 90s, really after NAFTA, where you see a huge drop in working class voting for Democrats in presidential and congressional elections. And the second is around the second Obama presidency when you see it. These are the two episodes in which [00:04:00] has happened in both of them. Same reason they saw their party, either in the case of NAFTA Clobbering them with the free trade agreement, or in the case of Obama turning away from all the promises he's made to them.

MELISSA NASCHEK: I want to talk a little bit more about NAFTA because this is something that you and some other left wing commentators have mentioned as a big turning point in both Democratic Party politics, their policy agenda, and specifically the party's relationship to the working class.

Can you explain a little bit more about what NAFTA is, and why it has such a big impact on the working class?

VIVEK CHIBBER - HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: Well, NAFTA stands for the North American Free Trade Agreement. And what it essentially did was removed a lot of the trade barriers between Canada and the United States and Mexico and the United States.

So, in removing those barriers, much cheaper goods came into the country, which American manufacturers couldn't compete with, and so it resulted in layoffs. The [00:05:00] other related factor here was what's called the China trade, which is cheap goods from China flooding the markets, which again, American manufacturers aren't able to compete with, which again, results in these layoffs.

Now, the important point here is it's under Clinton that both of these phenomena really start taking off. In both cases, he knew exactly what was going to happen. This is important because it's a conscious decision on the Democrats part to prioritize these economic policies over the predictable electoral consequences that came from them.

Now, why did that happen? In my opinion, it's because it was the midpoint of a longer term Democratic strategy of trying to orient themselves away from what they thought was a losing electoral constituency, which is the blue collar and low skill clerical working class, towards higher income groups.

Now why is it losing? There are analyses out there [00:06:00] that say, well it has to do with the demographic fact that workers are shrinking in size as a part of the electoral coalition. Kind of, but if they were really committed to a New Deal style redistributive politics they would adjust to the shrinking number of voters by crafting a wider coalition around those same goals, which is maintaining redistributive social democratic policies.

The question is, why didn't they fight to reintegrate themselves into a viable electoral coalition? It's because their political priorities have changed. So, in a very real sense, voters bolting from the Democratic party was not that much of a concern to them because, by that time, the Democratic party is trying to engineer a new electoral coalition anyway. And so, if the effect of NAFTA or free trade with China is to piss off working class voters so they don't [00:07:00] link up with the party anymore, the party kind of shrugs and says, we can live with that.

Democrats Bungled The 2024 Election WAY Worse Than We Thought - The Majority Report - Air Date 1-8-25

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: As we get more data out as to why Democrats lost, and I, and I phrase it that way specifically based upon the data. There's a good piece I think he's got a Substack, Michael Podhorzer, he was the former political director for the AFL CIO, now does data analysis. Long story short, the bottom line is that the election in 2024 was not an embrace of Republicans or MAGA beyond what it was in 2020, it was essentially a vote of no confidence in Democrats. And most of that vote of no confidence came by just staying home.

He's done an extensive report here, but essentially, the popular vote result was almost entirely a collapse in support for Harris and Democrats, not an increase in support for Trump and Republicans. [00:08:00] Essentially, most of Harris's losses were due to an anti MAGA surge voters staying home. The people who came out motivated by negative partisanship in 2018 and in 2020 and to some extent, less so in 2022, just essentially stayed home in 2024, and there's a couple of things that you can garner from that.

One is people didn't have a sense of what Trump's policies were or they weren't worried about it in the in the way to motivate them to come out and vote for Harris. They weren't motivated to vote for him, but they just they weren't motivated to leave and there was nothing that the democrats were offering or at least communicating as to what they were offering that [00:09:00] motivated these people to leave their homes and come out and vote for Harris.

Trump essentially got the same percentage of eligible voters as he did in 2020. And obviously that number goes up because our populations go up. Whereas Harris essentially got 19 million votes less or, or as to what she would have had she hit the same portion of eligible voters had voted for her.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: It's also the first time since the 1960s that a majority of Americans in the lower income voting block, which is voters earning less than $50,000 a year, voted Republican in terms of that majority share, and you can probably draw a line to when we see how Democrats lost so much ground in urban areas in blue states. Those are probably more low propensity Democratic partisans who didn't show [00:10:00] out. And the question is, then, why are we tailoring these campaigns to suburbanites? But also, frankly, how much did the genocide in Gaza and the administration's support of that, and how It just showed such a lack of regard for the lives of people who are not white or wealthy, really, how much that affected turnout.

I think that based on what we saw in AOC asking her constituents, she has a majority Latino district the exact kind of district they lost ground in, that was one of the many reasons that were listed and given to her as to why people didn't show up.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I think absolutely. And again, we've talked about this ad nauseum. I think it's like a there's a first order people who refused to vote based upon what was happening in Gaza. And then the second order in that a lot of activists who may have actually gone out and cast a vote for Harris, but were just less motivated and found it more difficult to go motivate people. And I don't know if we'll ever know specifically how [00:11:00] those break down. It's possible that the first order numbers could actually be higher than the second order, but certainly they combine. And then on top of that, you also have to remember, I mean, despite the fact that we've got Chuck Schumer saying this weekend that Democratic voters didn't know what Joe Biden did for them.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Whose fault is that? It's Biden's fault for being unable to communicate and hanging in there. And also, like, if that's the case, that's still a problem with the party structure, because you have to be able to do politics if you're a political party.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: But I would also argue that, There was also a failure to recognize a lot of the loss that took place under Biden, even from stuff that Biden and the Democrats provided in the first place, but to expect this cohort of voters to be savvy enough to know that something that they got, that came a month after Donald Trump left office and then was taken away two years into Biden's administration, they're [00:12:00] not going around going like, "it's a bummer about that $300 per child tax credit that I'm not getting anymore, but I know it was, it was Joe Manchin and it was Kyrsten Sinema."

This gets to, and we said this at the time, the failure of Biden to strike while the iron was hot in the spring of 2021, coming off the big win for the American Rescue Act, when Republicans were still talking about Dr. Seuss not publishing two of its books or something, and Joe Manchin was talking, maybe Build Back Better should actually be bigger than what Bernie says. Maybe it should be 6 trillion, that was the time to strike. But instead, what Joe Biden did is invite Republicans in to give them a proposal over the course of like two months. Then when that failed, invited Sinema and, and Portman to come in and provide their attempt at some bipartisanship for build back better. And this is a mistake that the Republicans will not make. They will not [00:13:00] make.

They have three more votes in the Senate than the Democrats did, but that's not enough to overcome a filibuster. And, and they may not have a Manchin and Sinema, but in the spring of 2021, Manchin was not Manchin yet. He was certainly latent, but this is why failures of actually legislation and legislating and leading implicate an election, I know this sounds crazy, three years later.

The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order (with Gary Gerstle) - Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer - Air Date 1-14-25

Nick Hanauer: Gary, as you must know, we talk about neoliberalism a lot on this podcast. Our podcast is largely devoted to tearing down neoliberalism and replacing it with a new thing. But for the purposes of this interview, it would be useful to start with your personal definition of neoliberalism. What do you think it is and we’ll proceed from there?

GARY GERSTLE: Neoliberalism is an ideology that calls for freeing capitalism from virtually all constraints, free the animal spirits of [00:14:00] capitalism and the market out of the belief that the greatest economic growth and thus, the greatest good for the greatest number of people will result from that kind of emancipation. And by freeing it from constraints, I’m thinking of regulatory constraints imposed by governments and states during the golden era of social democracy in Europe. And then we might say the golden era of the New Deal order in the United States. It was from the start, a global project. Dismantling control of capital has to be accomplished both domestically but also, internationally out of the belief that you cannot have the full yield of capitalist affluence unless the whole world is committed to this project. At the core of neoliberalism is a commitment to the free movement of goods, the free movement of people, the free movement of [00:15:00] information, and the free movement of capital across all borders.

It could not really become a global project and thus aspire to the success it had in the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century until the Soviet Union fell and communism as a relevant ideology in the world collapsed. Because central to the communist project was not just state management of economies in the public interest, but the exclusion of capital and capitalist penetration from any countries that were under communist rule. So, the 1989 to ’91 period of transition is crucial. I’ll say one other thing about it and then you can let me know your own thoughts about neoliberalism because you do talk about it a lot. Is it entirely an elite project? The proponents of neoliberalism acknowledge that it increases inequality in the world, that the gap between the rich and the poor would widen, but the supporters say that’s okay [00:16:00] because all boats will rise.

Everyone at the end of the day will be better off. That was the claim of neoliberalism. From that perspective, you can see it as an elite project in the sense that there would be benefits for everyone but the richest would have the greatest share of the benefits. There was not an acknowledgement of that there would be trade-offs, that this was a zero-sum game, that the gains of some classes domestically and some nations internationally would be at the cost of other nations or portions of nations suffering. That belief in the validity of neoliberalism and its value characterized the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century. It was believable and sellable as an ideology until the global financial crash of 2008, 2009, which gave a lie to the claim that all boats would rise and that no one would suffer under this new regime. There’s no [00:17:00] doubt that the neoliberal age dramatically increased inequality, left a lot of parts of the world, both in the United States and elsewhere to rot.

The world in which we’re living in now has to do with the consequences. But I also think that there is an emancipatory element of the neoliberal creed, which distinguishes my view of neoliberalism from some other people, that it carries with it a promise of freedom, of freeing the individual from constraints of allowing that individual to fully flourish. And especially in the United States, that has enormous appeal and that was part of Reagan’s popularity. You convert to my vision of market freedom, meaning Reagan’s vision of market freedom, you will be free. You will have opportunity that you did not have before. You’ll be free of artificial constraints, which are not simply imposed by large private institutions but by large public institutions as well. So, I talk about the new left of the 1960s and [00:18:00] ’70s, which opposed not just capital but big government and saw the New Deal as oppressive because in the language of the time, there was a system of corporation and government alliance, which was squashing the individuality and the individual opportunity of particular people.

There’s a cosmopolitan vision, which is part of the neoliberal dream, the ability of people to travel everywhere in the world, to mix with other peoples, other cultures, other ways of living, which the left finds enormously appealing. If you’re on the left, this is a world in which you want to live. So, there’s a component of the neoliberal world view which is appealing to people on the left side of the political spectrum. And there’s a kind of seduction that goes on that this will benefit not just corporate capitalists accumulating capital, but this promises an enlarged vision of freedom that a [00:19:00] lot of people can partake of.

How Democrats Can Win Back The Working Class - Lever Time - Air Date 11-8-24

ARJUN SINGH - SENIOR PRODUCER, LEVER TIME: Is there anything to the idea that there was an information ecosystem gap, if you will? And what I mean is that, in the closing days of the campaign, You saw Donald Trump and JD Vance go on Joe Rogan's podcast. Kamala Harris didn't go on Joe Rogan's podcast. She was appearing on podcasts like Call Her Daddy though. But basically that, to be able to reach not just a minority of voters, but what sounds like to reach a significant amount of voters, the kinds of voters who will be able to swing an election in one direction or the candidates have to go into these niche media ecosystem, whether that's Joe Rogan's podcast, Alex Cooper's podcast, the Undertaker's podcast. And that was somewhere that the Harris campaign either seemed to struggle with, or maybe more that the Trump campaign really excelled at.

But what do you think about the media ecosystem idea and that now [00:20:00] campaigns have to really look at the ecosystem as a constellation of different enterprises versus we're going to deal with the Washington press corps and then there's the local and regional press corps. Now you have to really look at it more as a map rather than a linear group of media organizations you're talking to.

JEFF WEAVER: Yeah, from the Bernie campaign, Bernie went almost anywhere they would have him, because he wanted to talk to people. He didn't care about the host or the host's views, he wanted to talk to the audience. He was criticized loudly by many the Democratic Party for being one of the first people to really go on a Fox. He did a Fox town hall in Pennsylvania. That was the infamous town hall when they asked the Fox-picked audience whether they supported Bernie Sanders socialist health care plan and everybody in the audience raised their hands to the shock of the of the moderators So , yes, there is.

I think the other problem is that the mainstream media is now viewed as a partisan. So you have Fox, which is clearly the Republican side. You've MSNBC They call it MSDNC, not [00:21:00] unfairly they call it that. CNN has had a Dr. Frankenstein problem since 2016 when they helped elect Trump. They've been trying to kill him since. If you watch Jim Acosta's show on CNN in the morning, the guy should be on Kamala Harris's FEC report. It's incredible. I support Kamala Harris and oppose Trump, but you just watch it as a political observer and you're like, "Holy smokes, this guy is a commercial for Kamala Harris." And, other forms of media just are not big enough in many ways to break through, but I do think it is a mistake to not talk to as broad a swath of voters as you can, with some kind of virtue signaling about Joe Rogan.

DAVID SIROTA: I would also add to that that there's a chicken or the egg problem here.

The Democrats and the Democratic infrastructure has been hostile to alternative media conduits in a way that the Republicans haven't, and that's been for I don't know 10 15 years. So the point is is that alternate independent media that the democrats could try to cultivate and [00:22:00] build is a longer term project to get to a point where engaging with them in an election is worthwhile and reaching a large audience. The Republicans have worked to create that. The Democrats haven't, and so here we are.

It seems like most democratic elected officials are most obsessed with getting booked on MSNBC, whereas Donald Trump is running around to anybody that's got any kind of audience to try to connect him with disaffected voters. I guess what it's saying is there's almost a class analysis in there, is that the Democratic elected leadership and party structure is interested mostly in talking with the kinds of voters that it did well among which are elite, affluent, upper-middle-class liberal voters, not necessarily interested in talking to a larger audience. Do you agree with that?

JEFF WEAVER: I do, but I would say this I think there's a lot of people who would take the Trump example at the Democratic Party establishment who would say that that's a dangerous thing. These platforms give someone like Trump a voice. [00:23:00] If you open it up on the Democratic side, you might be giving a left populist voice who would then displace them. Trump has displaced a lot of the traditional republican power structure. That's not a lesson learned for them, that's not a positive. You think the members of the DNC are really interested in having a left populist voice go out on the liberal or the Democratic blue media of some kind and blowing them away. I don't think so. Trump's success may reinforce the worst in those folks.

DAVID SIROTA: That's a really interesting point. What are the incentives of the Democratic party? Talk to us a little bit about that, this idea that the Democratic Party presents a brand of we're trying to win elections, but the internal dynamics of the Democratic Party are such that there is a lot of self preservation. That's any organization like Individuals are interested in preserving their own power, their own wealth, their own ability to make a living, etc, etc, but it seems like what you're alluding to is that there's a conflict of interest at the heart of the Democratic Party that [00:24:00] staying in power in the Democratic Party as it exists now, no matter how many elections it's winning or losing seems to be the top priority and the pervasive culture of the Democratic Party, not necessarily winning elections.

I guess what I'm getting at is, the idea of winning elections being more electorally powerful, but reshaping the party so that this the people who are in the party right now have less power. That's a battle because you're battling with self interest. You're battling with people who are trying to hold their territory. Is that basically right?

JEFF WEAVER: Well, it's true as an outsider. Those individuals are convinced that the presentation of the issues and their framing is correct. They believe it themselves that they're right and that the rest of the country is wrong. That's a difficult position to hold in a democracy and be successful.

Other countries, when you have bad elections, they replace leaders. In both parties in this country, that doesn't happen. You lose an election in England, the party leader who's in [00:25:00] the prime minister does not become the minority leader. That person is out.

DAVID SIROTA: I was going to ask about that. Zephyr Teachout wrote a piece in The Nation saying that Chuck Schumer needs to resign. And I think it's fair to say in most other countries when you get shellacked in an election, it's goodbye. That doesn't seem to be happening. Maybe it'll happen now. I guess it gets to my question of, if the Democratic Party can't change leadership now, after this kind of election, what does it say about the party itself? What does it say about American politics? How could it not have to change after what just happened?

JEFF WEAVER: Look, I think what a lot of people are going to rely on is trump self destructing. They're going to say, "oh, look, he got in there. People now are going to remember why they got rid of them last time. And if we just hold on, we'll win in the midterms and then we'll retake the presidency, and the insanity will be over in 2028. Of course, the insanity was supposed to be over in 2020, but the insanity will be over in 2028 and we'll move on". And these people have [00:26:00] convinced themselves that Trump is some kind of anomalous unicorn. Leaders don't make history, history makes leaders. And, he's taking steps now to institutionalize his brand of politics, Republican party, his vice presidential running mate would be probably worse for the country than Trump, I have to say, because he'll be more effective and more focused in an ideological way on changing the nature of government and its relationship to people.

Why Elites Love Identity Politics - Confronting Capitalism - Air Date 1-1-25

VIVEK CHIBBER - HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: But, make no mistake. Identity stuff didn't cause her defeat, but it absolutely sealed the deal on the defeat. It was a big factor, and to ignore that is just folly. So that then raises your question. How did she become, and her party become identified with it, and what role did it play? Why do I say it did play a big role? So let me try to address both things.

First of all, it played a big role in her defeat, because even though she steered clear from it, the last, I would say, six or eight years, the party has been propagating it in a really fulsome, in a very aggressive way.[00:27:00]

So, at the 11th hour, to suddenly not address it or to steer away from it, didn't fool anyone. And that's why Trump's ads were so effective in attacking her as somebody pushing identity politics down people's throats, was that they'd been doing it for eight years now. Why, in the recent past especially? Well, actually they've been pursuing it for a while. But again, with so many things in our political moment, it goes back to the initial Bernie Sanders campaign. The Democratic Party's answer to Bernie Sanders' propagation of economic justice and economic issues was to smear him as somebody who ignored the plight of what they love to call, their new term, marginalized groups, which is people of color, women, trans people, all matters dealing with sexuality. This is their counter to the Sanders campaign. They've done it assiduously now for eight years. So if in the [00:28:00] last two months they pull away from it, who do they think they're fooling? Literally nobody. So, that's why the turn away from it failed. Because it just seemed so ham handed and so insincere. Nobody bought it.

MELISSA NASCHEK: Right.

VIVEK CHIBBER - HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: The deeper question is what you just raised. Which is, why are they identified with it? Why have they embraced it? Well, from the moment of the Sanders campaign, it's clear why they embraced it, and we can come back to that in a moment to go deeper into that. But there's a longer historical legacy. They are or have been the party that's pursued race and gender equity for quite a while now. So why is that? It's, I think it's a historical legacy in two ways, okay?

The first is an obvious one. Coming out of the 1960s, when what's called the new social movements emerged, which is the antiracism movements, the civil rights movement, the feminist movement, Coming out of the 60s, this was the party that upheld and supported those demands, even when they were real [00:29:00] demand, demands for the masses, not just for elites, this party supported them. So unlike the Republicans who were the party of the ancien regime, you would say, of the resistance to the feminist movement, the resistance to the civil rights movement. So that's one historical legacy.

The second legacy is slightly more subtle, which is that coming out of the New Deal era, the Democrats, as their most important electoral constituency, was the working class. And working class, and the unionized working class in particular, was located in the cities, in large urban centers, because that's where the factories were. Now, what happened after the 80s, as cities transformed because of deindustrialization and the rise of new sectors, was that the geographical location of that electoral base didn't change. It was still cities, but the cities changed. Whereas [00:30:00] cities used to be the place where blue collar workers and unions were centered, by the early 2000s, cities became reorganized around new sectors: finance, real estate—what's called FIRE—insurance, the services, more high end income groups.

So in a way, if the Democrats hadn't done anything, if they had just continued to say, let's focus on the cities, they would have found that their electoral coalition has shifted from workers in the cities to whoever is now living in the cities, which is more affluent groups. And that meant then that affluent groups became the base of the party, and race and gender became reconceptualized around the experiences and the demands of those affluent groups. Okay? These are the two big historical legacies.

Now, a less significant but still salient point is this. After the 70s, in the interim, between the 70s and 2000s, in [00:31:00] both of these groups, minorities and women, the movements declined. And the place that the movements had was taken over by elected officials and the NGOs.

MELISSA NASCHEK: Right.

VIVEK CHIBBER - HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: So, for example, take the issue of race. The Black working class had a voice inside the Democratic Party through the CIO, through the trade unions, and they brought antiracism into the party through the prism of the needs of Black workers. Now, when the unions are dismantled and the trade unionism in general goes into decline, who is voicing the concerns of "people of color", of Blacks?

It's not going to be the more affluent Blacks that have come up through the post-Civil Rights Era. It's going to be Black political officials. And those Black political officials, by the 2000s, are spread all across the country. There's a huge rise in the number of Black elected officials, mayors, congressmen, Et cetera, et cetera. [00:32:00] And they now no longer have any reason to cater to working class Blacks because they're politically disorganized. What they are now is captured by the same economic forces as White politicians are, but they get to have the corner on race talk.

So what happens then is by the time people your age are coming into politics, people in their 20s, in the early to mid 2000s, race talk and gender talk has been transformed to some degree catering to the needs of working women and working class Blacks and Latinos to largely being taken over by the more affluent groups who are the electoral base of the Democratic Party in the cities, the politicos who now have increased in number tremendously, the NGOs who do a lot of the kind of spade work and the consultancy for the party.

What's missing is 70 to 80 percent of those groups who happen to be working people. [00:33:00] The Democrats, then, as the party of race, as the party of gender, is actually the party of race among the wealthier minorities in the party of gender as conceptualized by organizations like NOW, which are essentially just, you know, catering to wealthier women.

That's the historical legacy, and that's why, within the party, this was the natural response to Sanders because they were able to draw on this experience and draw on this legacy since that legacy is real.

The failures of liberals and the Left have helped Trump's rise - The Marc Steiner Show - Air Date 10-30-24

RICK PERLSTEIN: Yeah, I think about this a lot since the Republicans are such inveterate norm breakers, the story a lot of mainstream Democrats say in return is that we have to uphold norms, right? I mean, if something bad is happening, you did the opposite of that bad thing. And there was a wonderful piece in New Republic by the Pulitzer Prize winning, historian, Jefferson Cowie, whose, if you haven't read [00:34:00] his Freedom's Dominion about how the word freedom became an alibi for coercion in American history through the experience of a single Alabama County, he pointed out that every time democracy truly won a structural victory against the court, the forces of reaction or stagnation, it was through a brazen act of norm breaking. If you think about the fact that the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments and the military reconstruction of the South, the laws that enabled that passed before any Southerners were let back into Congress. Right? I mean, can you imagine how like the Obamas and Clintons would freak out if you said, oh, well, we need to defeat fascism by ignoring, you know, the votes of the states that have become fascist. Right? If you look at something like, you know, Roosevelt's court packing plan, right?

MARC STEINER - HOST, THE MARC STEINER SHOW: Yeah.

RICK PERLSTEIN: Nothing in the New Deal would have happened [00:35:00] unless he had threatened basically the Supreme Court with political, the existing Supreme Court, the incumbent Supreme Court, with political disillusion unless they allow something like the Social Security Act to be declared constitutional, you know? And then finally, this is a very obscure thing in history, most people don't know about this, but it's probably one of the most fascinating things that ever happened. In 1961, JFK realized that no liberal legislation would ever pass because the rules committee and the House of Representatives was ruled with an iron fist by a guy, you might remember this name, Judge Howard Smith, very reactionary Virginia conservative and a coalition he had of Democrats and Republicans who just turned it into a graveyard for every liberal legislation.

So he arranged for the size of the rules committee to expand and added three members without which Civil Rights Act never would have passed, the Voting Rights would never [00:36:00] would have passed, Medicare never would have passed, Medicaid never would have passed, any liberal's legislation would have passed. And it was just by cheating, really. So, unless we kind of figure out, within the realm of kind of under the Capitol dome, kind of top down institutional Democratic Party stuff, unless they kind of get over their kind of Boy Scout attitude and realize some judicious norm breaking might be required, we might be stuck in this miasma for all of our lifetimes.

BILL FLETCHER JR.: Let me just say this, Marc. Another way of putting what Rick just said is that when Michelle Obama said, "When they go low, we go high", that was, like, wrong. When they go low, when they go low, we snap the rug from under them and let them collapse.

RICK PERLSTEIN: When you meet them halfway, that makes it easier for them to spit at you.

BILL FLETCHER JR.: That's right. I mean, I think that the problem, [00:37:00] that, Rick, you just summed it up so well, this assumption of normality, the assumption that we have to be the adults in the room, you know, it's like, you remember the example I gave to you once, Marc, about the Battle of the Crater, Petersburg, Virginia.

MARC STEINER - HOST, THE MARC STEINER SHOW: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes.

BILL FLETCHER JR.: You remember that?

MARC STEINER - HOST, THE MARC STEINER SHOW: Yes.

BILL FLETCHER JR.: Right? I don't know if you ever heard this story, Rick. Do you ever know about, have you ever heard about the Battle of the Crater?

MARC STEINER - HOST, THE MARC STEINER SHOW: It's worth telling. Go ahead.

BILL FLETCHER JR.: So, what happened is, 1864, Union troops surrounded Petersburg, and Confederate defenses were very formidable. So, the Union troops developed a brilliant idea of building this tunnel underneath the Confederate defenses, loading it up with high explosives, and the idea when you set this off and blow the Confederate line. And in the explosion would be so massive, it would not only kill, but it would throw the Confederates into disarray.

So they do this, and the explosion was [00:38:00] massive, and it created this crater. And the Confederate forces that survived were running chaotically back towards Petersburg as a result of this. The Union troops went into the crater and stopped and they sat there and they looked around in marvel at the extent of this devastation, body parts and everything else, and at a certain point the Confederates realized they weren't being chased. They reorganized, came back and massacred the Union soldiers.

RICK PERLSTEIN: Right.

BILL FLETCHER JR.: The Obama administration blew a giant hole in the Confederate line, Republicans. And instead of us going through and chasing these guys to extinction. We sat in a hole, marveling over this great historical event, the election of the first Black president and him playing the [00:39:00] role of the braided belt in the living room, right? And we missed the moment and allowed the Confederates to reorganize and they came back as the Tea Party, and we've been paying the price ever since.

Democratic Dealignment w Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor - The Dig - Air Date 11-9-24

DANIEL DENVER - HOST, THE DIG: To close out, I think we can, I think we would both agree that the left has nowhere near the sort of mass organization that we require to govern, instead of sort of meekly petition the governing class. Where should we be focusing strategically our organizing efforts? I mean, two things that come to mind to me always are our labor and and housing.

KEEANGA-YAMAHTTA TAYLOR: Well, I think labor is paramount and it's often missing in our discussions about what the future [00:40:00] holds. You know, we look at police brutality. We look at this campaign. We look at that campaign. But really, I think in order to make a qualitative difference, these campaigns actually have to be connected to the labor movement. And so, you know, I think Chicago Teachers Union has always been a powerful example of how you tie bread and butter issues to the broader social issues and what they and others describe as social movement unionism. And so, you know, I think there needs to be more discussions and collaborations like that.

I think Shawn Fain at the UAW is kind of a figure cut from that mold. And to what extent has Fain been drawn into some of these broader political conversations about where do we go from here? And not just, I know that there is, Fain has been instrumental in stacking [00:41:00] contracts for 2028, which I think is a, you know, exemplar strategy and how do we connect that to the social movements, right?

How do we connect that to the social questions, the political questions that will, we know in this period, find organizational expression. And so that is a key issue. And then, you know, I think that the question of labor and the insurgent union drives are important in the sense that these are often young people who are at work, but who are also connected to these other kinds of social questions.

And so to me, the big issue is the need to break through this wall that sees the labor movement as some kind of old thing over there, and the social movements that don't [00:42:00] really have the political, economic, or social weight to accomplish their goals. How do we bring these things together? And again, that is always the prob- those things don't happen out of good luck. They don't happen because they should. They happen because of political organizing. They happen because of political perspectives. And that is what we have to create the space for.

And that has been part of the ongoing frustration, is that we haven't created the spaces to map out those kinds of tactical, strategic political discussions that are linked to historical theoretical discussions about, 'What is it that we're fighting for? What are, what is the ultimate intention of all of this activism?' That has to be also integrated into the discussion about [00:43:00] how we- what kind of activism or movement facilitates the possibility of the kind of social transformation that we're talking about. And so these are multi level conversations because very quickly, there will be lots for us to respond to.

If we can think back, even though 2016, 2017 won't repeat itself, you know, in the same way, we have some indication, right? The part of Trump's strategy. In 2017 was, I think we described it as shock and awe, that there were just so many outrageous things happening at the same time as a way to really overwhelm the left, because you'd have to respond to the Muslim ban. He's appointing, you know, the CEO of Exxon to be the head of [00:44:00] the EPA. He's appointing some horrible New York developer to be the head of HUD. They will try to pass a, you know, abortion ban. They probably won't start with the abortion ban. They'll start with legislation that makes the morning after pill illegal.

I mean, there's- there will be an onslaught of things that we will be forced to respond to. But what can't happen is that the rapid response to the shock and awe, the Trump administration undermines these bigger political questions about organization strategy and tactics that have to take place. Because this is what always happens, right? It's the expedient response to the immediate issue in front of us. And then it feels like the next step to stop having to [00:45:00] respond to every single issue, means we got to get the Democrat in. So you already know that more likely than not, they're going to get the House. So they're going to have the three wings of government for the first two years of the Trump administration.

The pressure to stop every single thing anyone is doing to win back the House in 2026 is just going to be unbelievable. And this is what happens. And then 2026 comes, and then we know if Trump's not dead, that there'll be some Republican knuckle dragger who will be the worst thing that we've ever heard of, which means all hands on deck. Everything must end now to get Josh Shapiro or some other hack from the Democratic Party into [00:46:00] office. And so that's, we know that's the cycle. And everything that we do then, gets put on hold forever. Because there's never a good time, when the Republicans are always lurking, you know, in the shadows, there's never a good time to do the work that we need to do.

So this is part of the political challenge. These are the discussions that we have to be having now. How do we build these organizations? And how do we continue to engage with these conversations while having to attend to the inevitable crises that are unleashed by whatever Trump, Bannon, Stephen Miller, have in store for us.

Why Elites Love Identity Politics Part 2 - Confronting Capitalism - Air Date 1-1-25

MELISSA NASCHEK: So now we're at kind of an interesting point where the Democrats have used this strategy to great success, at least, at crushing the left. [00:47:00] And now it's having a huge negative impact on the perception of the party and their reputation as a party that's going to fight for the downtrodden. So given how discredited identity politics has been, at least how the Democratic Party has practiced it, what kind of relationship should the left have to identity politics, if it should have any relationship to it?

VIVEK CHIBBER - HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: The left should very aggressively and actively fight against social domination of any kind, whether it's gender, race, or sexuality. It has to do that. It has to, however, do it in a way that expands beyond the interests of the wealthy and actually addresses the interests of working people, working women, working minorities, right? Which means then that it should take advantage of this opening to bring race and gender justice back to what it was in its, what I would call, its glory days in the 1950s and 60s, [00:48:00] where it was actively a component of the working class movement.

So the way I think you essentially, people like Sanders, people like Shawn Fain, who's been behind the incredible resurgence of the UAW, I think that they're already doing this work where they're saying that we need to address the incredible race and gender disparities in this country, but the way we do it is by building a system cheap housing that's high quality, by making healthcare a right, by addressing the fact that poor schooling and poor jobs lock people of color into poverty for generations, and the only way out of it is not by addressing discrimination, but by addressing the quality of the jobs and the availability of jobs.

This was when the left actually moved the needle on racism in this country, when it actually affected the lives of millions upon millions of Latinos and Blacks. So, in my opinion, the left, the way it ought to respond to this opening, is to take up the [00:49:00] banner of race justice and gender justice. But don't call it identity politics, call it, you know, after school specials if you wanted to, call it something else. But in my opinion, you have to rhetorically separate yourself from this. It's been so long. There was a time when socialists used to look with contempt at the attempts of narrow elites to take over these movements. And I think my dream is for the left to regain the moral confidence and the social weight, and the only way that'll happen, the only way any of this will happen—we've talked about this before, and we'll keep coming back to it—the only way it happens is if socialists in this country become the voice of the left, rather than academics and politicos and media celebrities, and if socialists in this country come from these communities of working people, women and minorities, because they will have the confidence to tell these supposed spokespeople for these [00:50:00] issues to take a step back because they come from those populations, from those sectors that they're fighting for. So, we have to continue to try to promote working class candidates in elections. We have to continue to try to build trade unions. We have to continue to make sure that they're the ones expressing the demands along these race and gender lines, and it doesn't come from professors, from media celebrities, from politicians, because they will always steer it towards the narrow elite ends.

Note from the Editor on the path Democrats have charted

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips starting with Confronting Capitalism discussing the widening gap between the Democratic Party and the working class. The Majority Report explained why the election was more of a loss for Democrats than a win for Republicans. Pitchfork Economics explained the history of neoliberalism. Lever Time focused on the difficulty the left is having in messaging and maintaining an information ecosystem. Confronting Capitalism discussed the complicated role of identity politics in our shifting political landscape. The Marc Steiner Show looked at the strategic benefits of bending the [00:51:00] rules from time to time. The Dig discussed the need for greater connection with labor, for the left And Confronting Capitalism, using historical examples, showed the way to integrate both economic and social justice into organizing.

And those were just the top takes, there's a lot more in the deeper dive section. But first, a reminder that the show is produced with the support of our members who get access to bonus episodes and enjoy all of our shows without ads. To support our work and have those bonus episodes delivered seamlessly to the new members only podcast feed the you'll receive. Sign up to support the [email protected] slash support.

There's a link in the show notes through our Patrion page or from right inside the apple podcast app. And as always, if regular membership isn't in the cards for you, shoot me an email requesting a financial hardship membership because we don't let a lack of funds stand in the way of hearing more information. And also we're trying something new recently.

We're offering you the opportunity to submit comments and questions on upcoming topics. It takes us a little bit to put the shows together so I can give you a heads up. [00:52:00] And if it strikes your interest, you can send in your questions ahead of time. Next up we'll be tackling the LA fires and the broader interplay between fire and water in the age of climate change.

And then following that, we'll take a look at the apparent ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and other updates on the region. So get your comments and questions. And now for those topics, you can leave a voicemail or send us a text at 2 0 2 9 9 9 3 9 9 1.

Or simply email me to J asbestos bluff.com. Now, as for today's topic, I have a few scattered thoughts first on the ongoing debate. Amongst the left between fighting discrimination with racial and gender justice frameworks, and the idea of economic populism that looks past structures of identity politics. I just want to echo what we've already been hearing and emphasize as strongly as possible that we can do both.

As evidence, one of the biggest and most accurate criticisms of the formal black lives matter organization coming from the right. [00:53:00] Is that it was full of Marxists. And it's true that there is a strong socialist thread running through the racial justice movement. And that should be all the evidence.

We need to see that there is not a conflict between the two, but a dovetailing that can easily link the movements. What we very much do not need is anyone attempting to divide us by pitting these ideas against one another as though they don't go hand in hand Socialist shouldn't think of social justice as a distraction from economic populism.

And we shouldn't believe anyone who argues that we can't take on the money to lead because doing so won't itself resolve racism or sexism.

Secondly on the topic of the democratic party, moving away from the demands of the working class. It's always important to remind people about the money primary. This is the bigger structural perspective. It's not just. How the Democrats work. It's certainly not about individual Democrats and how they feel. The money.

Primary is the structure that sits on top of our politics. We hold [00:54:00] primary and general elections to find our elected leaders, but before any of that happens, there's the money primary where potential candidates have to make themselves appealing to big money donors to find their campaigns. And all of that happens before any voters have a chance to weigh in. Now the misconception is often that politicians sell out their convictions for the sake of those big donors.

And that undoubtedly happens to some degree, but the reality is most people who are even in the room to make their pitch to those donors. Are already naturally appealing to big money and they don't actually have to change that much about themselves. There are people whose genuine beliefs don't include making drastic changes to the way capitalism is allowed to function in the country. Some of the big name, recent examples include after the housing market crash Obama. sort of famously told to the bankers that he was the only thing standing between them and the pitchforks to which [00:55:00] I have always said, get out of the way, what are you doing? Then Hillary Clinton and her run against Bernie Sanders was making sort of straw man arguments saying that she, she never changed her vote based on donor influence.

But of course, that completely obfuscates the fact that. She was able to bring in all of those big dollar donations from banks and private prison corporations and all of that. Because she was the type of bank friendly politician who didn't need to be bribed because she was already on their side. That's the same problem.

Just the flip side of the coin. And then finally come layers. Most recently, we all know, went the route of, instead of, you know, leaning into the economic populism that Biden kindest tried to get off the ground a little bit. She ended up touring with Liz Cheney and billionaire mark Cuban. So. There's good reason to argue that establishment Democrats have been putting big money, overworking people [00:56:00] for a long time. It doesn't then follow that Republicans will be any better.

They're sure to be much worse, but the anger directed at Democrats. He does have a foundation. And then finally, I just want to think back to the 20, 20 race again, and the backroom deals that were made when Bernie Sanders was leading in that primary race. Bernie was winning the first few states before the whole field of candidates dropped out and backed Biden.

But Bernie was only winning a plurality of votes, not a majority of votes in most cases. And in that field, Bernie really was an outlier in terms of policies. So I do think it's fair to say that votes going to other candidates could sort of collectively be understood as. Someone other than Bernie. Votes right. So it definitely wasn't the overwhelming enthusiasm for Biden. They put him ahead that didn't really exist. It was primarily an uneasiness with Sanders, more aggressive and populist [00:57:00] approach that put people off and made them want to vote for someone else.

Now, I bring this up, not to argue that. It was right for Bernie to have lost. I wish he hadn't. But I want to highlight that it wasn't just the establishment politicians who were going against Bernie. And what I would argue, not understanding the shifting mood of the country that was making someone like Bernie much more appealing. To a broad base of voters. It was the democratic party, primary voters as well, who didn't understand that. Many of those voters personally, like the types of policies that Bernie Sanders puts forward, but have the impression that other people fear radical average voters out there in the world, wouldn't like them.

So. To them, they were making this calculation and it felt like too much of a risk to support someone like Sanders, but But what they missed in that calculation is just how widespread the favoribility is for Sanders style, democratic socialism policies that help people. A [00:58:00] politics that actually delivers. Now, arguably Biden did more than the progressive left expected in terms of trying to shift our economics away from the neoliberal status quo.

And I'm appreciative for that. But their messaging was terrible. And even if their messaging was great, there were too many other mistakes being made That helped drown out the good that was being done economically. So the Biden administration efforts ended up being too little, too late. And here we are with working people, continuing to be stuck between two parties that they don't believe will deliver for them. And I continue to argue, at least for now that the democratic party is still the entity that can be bent and molded in a new direction to get back to unwavering support for people while welcoming the hatred of the economic royalists as FDR described them. But the fight for the direction of the party must be happening now. And in the intervening years, Not just during the [00:59:00] next election cycles.

SECTION A: PARTY RECKONING

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now we'll continue to dive deeper on four topics, section a party reckoning followed by section B meal, liberal stranglehold Section C crossed wires focusing on the reorganization of the Republican party. And section D solutions.

Why Elites Love Identity Politics Part 3 - Confronting Capitalism - Air Date 1-1-25

VIVEK CHIBBER - HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: So in order to be able to understand or analyze identity politics, you've got to first define it.

MELISSA NASCHEK: Yeah.

VIVEK CHIBBER - HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: You want to define identity politics in as neutral a way as possible so that you're not seen to be building into the definition your criticisms of it.

So we want a definition that most people can recognize as being legitimate. Now, how do most people understand identity politics? Well, I would say there's a couple of things that people associate with it. The first is a attention on discrimination as being at the essence of race domination.

Discrimination disparities. By disparities, we mean you look at any occupation, any phenomenon like housing, any phenomenon like medical [01:00:00] care, and you see, do blacks and whites and Latinos and whites get equal outcomes? And if they don't get equal outcomes, you say, well, there's a disparity within it.

Similarly with discrimination. You want to find out if people getting Equal access to goods, to services, to social outcomes, things like that. Disparities, discrimination, this is one element. And then the other element is what we would call representation. Do we see black and brown faces and presences in social institutions at a level, at a number that you would expect, given what their place in the population is?

So representation, disparities, these are probably what most people think of when they think of identity politics. Thank you. All right, so why would anybody criticize it? You criticize it because it's not so much that these things don't matter, it's that they are most important for, and most important to, elite sections of minority populations.

So take the issue, for example, of disparities. [01:01:00] All right, so you think that there's a problem of housing availability and home ownership in the middle class. Fewer blacks in own homes within the middle class than whites do within the middle class. Look at graduation rates. Fewer blacks graduate or Latinos graduate than whites do.

You look at corporate boardrooms. There are fewer black managers, women managers, than there are male managers or white managers. These are all examples of disparities. Why should anybody have a problem with that? Well, you don't, but the issue is, across a number of phenomena, it's not the disparities in jobs, or wages, or housing that matters, but the very availability of it.

So, take wages, for example. You might say the lower ends of the job market, say, if you're working at Walmart, blacks get lower wages than whites do. That's true. Now, If you solve that problem, will it take care of the quality of life and the life opportunities for [01:02:00] Black Americans or Latinos? If you move them from, say, 13 an hour to what whites are getting, which is 15 an hour, will it solve the problem?

Well, it makes it better. But it absolutely doesn't solve the problem. Why then the focus on these disparities, if it doesn't solve the problem, it's that they loom largest for the elite sections of the population. Because for the elite sections of the population, they've already achieved an appreciable standard of living.

What they want to get is the full value of their class position. Whereas for the lower rungs, for the working class, They're not trying to get the full value of their class position. Their problem is the class position itself. Solving the problem of disparities for people in the lower rungs of the job market doesn't solve their basic dilemmas because for them, the problem is the job itself.

The quality of the job itself, the availability of the jobs themselves. So simply attending to the distribution of people in housing. Let's take housing as an example. One criticism is blacks don't [01:03:00] get mortgages at the same rates that whites do. By the same rates I mean they don't get as many. And they don't get it at the same interest rate.

Well, that's fine if you have the income to afford a house. But for most of the working class, the issue isn't mortgages. What they need is cheap public housing. But you never see this enter the debate on racial justice. So if you agree, as most people do, that identity politics has to do with disparities and representation, then the problem with identity politics is not that it Doesn't touch the lives of minorities is that it touches the lives most powerfully of a tiny section of the minorities Which is their elite sections and to move beyond that deal with the quality of life the life chances of the vast majority of minorities And women now you have to go beyond disparities and look at the actual Availability of social goods not the distribution and not the sorting of different races into those social goods

MELISSA NASCHEK: I think you're right that a big problem [01:04:00] In any discussion of identity politics, whether it's critical or otherwise, is that there are all these different meanings floating around.

So one recent interview I heard was saying that when people criticize identity politics, really what they're saying is, we don't support Black Lives Matter, we don't support pay equity for women, issues like that. And I think what you're outlining is that identity politics is not just I'm critical of this.

I'm critical of that campaign. It's a completely unique outlook on how to build political coalitions and how to understand the interests of racial and gender groups.

VIVEK CHIBBER - HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: Yeah. So people on the left, socialists or Marxists. When they criticize identity politics, what are they criticizing? They can't possibly be criticizing the pursuit of racial justice since socialists have led the way on the pursuit of racial [01:05:00] justice for a hundred years and similarly on gender lines.

They can't be saying we should set aside matters of race. Then what are they saying? What they're saying is that Under the banner of race justice, identitarians pursue it in a way that leaves the interests and the experiences of the vast majority of people of color out of the political strategy, similarly with women.

So I think then that once we've defined it in this way, it makes it possible for us to analyze it in terms of where it comes from, why it's so popular, etc., etc. And I think that's what we ought to be pursuing next.

Democratic Dealignment w Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor Part 2 - The Dig - Air Date 11-9-24

DANIEL DENVER - HOST, THE DIG: Little study groups and sex, which some people I think really, actually, kind of perversely yearn to return to the comfort of. Because being in mass politics and organizing, say, you know, tenants in a building, Some of whom are Trump voters and you need every single person on board. That is what a tenant union looks like.

That is what a labor union looks like. [01:06:00] That's what

KEEANGA-YAMAHTTA TAYLOR: the working class movement. Yes.

DANIEL DENVER - HOST, THE DIG: That's what the working class looks like. Yeah. And, and, and there really is, there is a certain type of identity politics that really does play into the right hands. And this is something that mainstream analysts, we were passing this absurd New York Times article.

Uh, we were discussing that ahead of the election that mainstream analysts have really glommed onto, but they've done so in a really. Really confused and confusing way because in fact the the upshot isn't selling out racial justice or trans people It's building a big movement that tells a cohesive compelling story about what's going on in this country and how to fix it and that invites everybody in

KEEANGA-YAMAHTTA TAYLOR: that has Solidarity at its core and the the old Knights of Labor Slogan that an injury to one is an injury to all And really explicating, uh, what that looks like and what that means.

And we were onto something with that in 2020. And that is part of the reason why the [01:07:00] backlash was so fierce. Um, I wrote about how Scott Walker, the former governor of Wisconsin, Said in 2022, when the Republicans were washed out, uh, in the midterm elections, that this is because of the multicultural curriculums and schools that, you know, if we don't change or address this, that The Republicans will never win, uh, another election.

And part of that was also not just critical race theory, not just that, but a reaction to young white people marching militantly in the streets against racism. And so that was, A critical opportunity to not just come out of 2020 having dumped Trump, but really building a vehicle that could grow. And instead, [01:08:00] all of that energy got diverted into getting Joe Biden elected, then got diverted again into the Georgia Senate races, uh, in, in, in January and then was demobilized really.

And so. If you think about it, Joe Biden, even as he was backing away from his promises, doing the bidding of, uh, uh, Republicans and deconstructing the emergency COVID state, faced no resistance, faced no opposition, the only hint of opposition and resistance to Joe Biden. Joe Biden came, uh, last spring with the eruption of the Palestinian solidarity protest, because it was the one issue that could not be co opted into the Democratic Party in ways that Black Lives Matter could, in ways that the immigrant rights movement could, in ways that certainly the LGBT [01:09:00] movement could.

And so, This is part of the problem, the demobilization. And so here we are faced with renewed, uh, political, uh, attacks, still lacking those vehicles to respond in a mass way, it doesn't mean that people won't respond and that we can't respond because people inevitably will when Trump tries to initiate deportations and all of the horrible things that he has promised to do.

But the left, we have big problems. The fracturing of the left, the lack of political vehicles, the entanglement with the democratic party, which meant that. You know, it's not like the Joe Biden just pushed a button and, Ooh, the left is demobilized. It's also about [01:10:00] how groups who believe that access within the democratic party gives them the air of officials in the democratic party, uh, and perhaps that is the most effective way to get change.

So. These are parts of, of political debates that need to, to happen, strategic debates, tactical debates about what it is that we should be doing and how it is that we build ourselves out, uh, of the current, uh, crisis that we're in right now.

DANIEL DENVER - HOST, THE DIG: And I think we need to have those debates. in, if possible, a comradely fashion, and that really assesses the conjuncture and possible paths forward strategically rather than moralistically.

KEEANGA-YAMAHTTA TAYLOR: Absolutely. Which probably means not on Twitter. Well, but that, I mean, I think that that is actually a big thing. Like, how do we Build our way out of this, are we going to do it on these online platforms? Can we get in [01:11:00] rooms together? Can we talk to each other? And some of it, it sounds like, what are you talking about?

This, this sounds so, is it touchy feely? I don't know, but there, there is a culture problem. And the left, the, the hostility, the intolerance, which I think has conclusively been proven, uh, to be a feature of online engagement. And so, something has to change, because there's just, there's not just going to be cycles of, Well, this is just like 2016, 2017.

Trump comes in, there's going to be a resistance and then we resist and resist and resist and have a confrontation and then funnel all of our resources to get, you know, Josh Shapiro, uh, elected as president. This is, it's not happening because the democratic party's core constituencies are breaking off, are falling out.

And so. [01:12:00] There's a real question about what can be done, what is to be done, what we can do that have to be seriously addressed. This is, there's this idea, I think, from liberals that, oh, this has happened before, we confronted this before, let's have a women's march. You know, in, in January and things are worse, things are materially worse for people.

I think that the Trump administration is not going to be surprised. They were just as surprised as everyone else when they won in 2016. Stephen Miller has been planning since 2020 about how to get back to the White House and get every Spanish speaking person in this country deported. So that Project 2025 is unfortunately a real thing.

Like they have a plan of governance. It doesn't mean that they can [01:13:00] go in and just hit a button and execute the entire thing, but, but they, this is not the surprise, Oh my God, we have power. This is, yes, we're returning to power. Yeah, we have plans

DANIEL DENVER - HOST, THE DIG: and they're no kind of old school establishment Republicans or deep state figures who are going to be in the room to mess it up for him.

They've got a they've got a team that's ready to go.

KEEANGA-YAMAHTTA TAYLOR: They have the government. They have all the chambers of Congress and the Supreme Court. This is not 2016.

Democrats Bungled The 2024 Election WAY Worse Than We Thought Part 2 - The Majority Report - Air Date 1-8-25

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: one of the myths that are going around is one that it was an, a, an immigration question because There's no evidence. That immigration drove more votes to Donald Trump because he got essentially the same share of the electorate as he did in 2021.

Excuse me, 2020. And I also want to say the same thing for the culture war against, wage against, uh, trans people. There is no, [01:14:00] uh, suggesting the idea that, uh, people were enraged about trans. Are Trump voters? Upset about trans people? Yes, that's their, uh, that's their, um, aggrievement du jour. But that didn't, that didn't create any new voters for Trump.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Right. In 2022, the Republicans without Trump at the top of the ticket were, like, did not do well running on transphobia as one of their central planks. Absolutely

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: not. And I just want to go over this AP. I mentioned this yesterday, but this is very important to understand because the people out there who are talking about, like, we have some type of social contagion, the people who are talking about like, you know, uh, trans rights are overcoming everything.

And, you know, you can't send your kid to school without, you know, coming out, uh, trans AP, uh, reports that, uh, JAMA, the, uh, Journal of, uh, American, uh, Medical Association, [01:15:00] Pediatrics, has um, done a study to try and assess how many children, patients, ages eight to 17, received gender affirming care. The data ranges from 2018 to 2022, five years.

2022 is the last year I think that they could get the full data as they were doing this study. Only 926 adolescents with a gender related diagnosis received puberty blockers over that five year period. Not nine, not nine thousand, not, not nine hundred thousand, nine hundred and twenty six. That's less than two kids, uh, excuse me, twenty kids per state over a five year period.[01:16:00]

Also during that time. About double that, almost 2, 000 received hormones. Again, this is from ages 8 to 17. This is over a five year period. The research has found that no patients under the age of 12 were prescribed to hormones. So only, uh, kids 12 to 18, 2, 000 of them over the course of five years. The study did not look at surgeries.

Other researchers have found those procedures are extremely rare. That's relative to the incredibly rare amount of, uh, kids who are actually getting gender affirming care in medications. And what that, uh, suggests, if it's not explicit, is that there are safeguards, that this isn't being done willy nilly.

Um, you know, that Johnny's

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: [01:17:00] not going to school and coming back jail or whatever, like Donald Trump has been saying. It's not a new

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: industry. Yeah, they're just sending kids to kindergarten. But even the people who supposedly are like, uh, listen, I'm for trans rights, but, um, But? I'm just concerned that we are, uh, castrating, uh, you know, the children and we are ruining children's lives willy nilly.

We are not. Despite the actual data. You can tell me that, uh, there's one whistleblower who ends up being considered a freak by everybody who, uh, came in, uh, touch with her at a hospital, causing bomb threats everywhere, saying that the procedures, uh, were, were too lax, but the actual data tells a completely different story.

Yep. This, and not to mention the studies that show that the people receive this care almost overwhelmingly, well, no, overwhelmingly, but almost totally. Um, we're happy they engaged in this care, and you can't find any medical procedure [01:18:00] or any frankly psychological treatment.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And this doesn't have any

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: better rate of less regret.

So, I mean, this is really important stuff to understand.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Right. And this is very similar data to the one that, uh, Joe Rogan pulled up some years ago, uh, I guess it was just two years ago at this point, when Matt Walsh came on to promote this documentary, where he was saying that there were millions of children in this country undergoing, um, trans affirming care, and this is somebody who supposedly toiled over this data and did a whole documentary about it.

When you see the reality of these numbers, just Just be clear, like, these are not people operating in good faith, they're smear merchants directing hatred towards people because they can't deliver on their politics for a majority of Americans. And when you engage,

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: when you engage in this culture war, all you're doing, all you're doing, you're not helping children, you're not protecting children, all you're doing is, [01:19:00] uh, creating more hate, you're creating more suffering, you're helping, uh, right wingers, and, um, you're perpetrating lies an aggrieve and just demonizing the next, um, uh, you know, cohort du jour that's going to be demonized by the right.

That's all you're doing.

SECTION B: NEOLIBERAL STRANGLEHOLD

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering section B neoliberal, stranglehold.

The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order (with Gary Gerstle) Part 2 - Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer - Air Date 1-14-25

Nick Hanauer: Gary, our focus is usually on the economics, on the academic economics, and you’re obviously taking a historical view. How does, do these two things relate? And were there historical drivers that led naturally to the neoclassical economic framework from which neoliberalism was derived? I guess the way we think about it is that you have got this layer, if you will, of neoclassical [01:20:00] economics, which is based on a bunch of underlying, theoretically empirical, scientifically verified assumptions about human behavior, about the dynamics of human social systems, about the origins and nature of prosperity, so on and so forth. And from that you derive neoliberalism, which is its ideological companion, right? The sort of social, cultural, political and moral framework from which we allow to govern ourselves. How does the academic layer, economic academic layer relate to the ideology? Which came first, for example? It’s sort of a chicken and egg problem a little bit, isn’t it?

GARY GERSTLE: You mean the other dimension referring to the cultural dimension, this dream of freedom? Is that-

Nick Hanauer: Yeah.

GARY GERSTLE: I think they both arose at the same moment. If the new left moment is the 1960s and ’70s, I would say the cultural component came first from [01:21:00] university students, many of them privileged, growing up in what they took to be a massively bureaucratized society that did not deliver on the promise of individuality and freedom that they had been led to expect would be part of their American birthright. This yearning for personal freedom was there in the ’60s during a moment of great affluence. But then you have the economic crisis of the 1970s, and that economic crisis is profound in terms of eliminating the dominance of a different system of economics, Keynesian economics, that have been integral to the new deal order. There are two sources of crises in the 1970s which upend the New Deal and Keynesianism, one is that America has serious industrial competitors in the world for the first time since prior to the Second World War. After World War II, the U.S. is the only [01:22:00] industrial economy still standing, and the world is its oyster.

It can do whatever it wants to in the world, or I should say in the non-communist world. One of the things it does is that it builds up the competitors it had defeated, Germany and Japan. And it needs to do this because it can’t sell enough goods to international consumers unless those consumers are out there. And in the 1970s, Japanese cars and electronics and German machinery and cameras and other things, they have become serious competitors to the United States. And the U.S. industry is not ready for it because they’ve had a 30-year period of control and oligopoly behavior where two or three firms which control entire industries. And over the long term, that’s not a good recipe for economic growth and prosperity because you dull innovation, the imperative of productivity. The other thing that [01:23:00] happens in the 1970s is a reordering of relations between consumers of resources in the global north and the suppliers of those resources in the global south.

And here, the critical event is the Yom Kippur War of 1973, which leads Saudi Arabia to boycott, refuse to sell its oil to the West. And the West’s prosperity had been built on the promise of unending supplies of cheap oil from the Middle East, which were still at that time under the control of Anglo-American oil companies and they made the decisions how much oil to extract from the ground and what price to charge. That ends in 1973 with the rise of OPEC and the determination that these resources belong to the producers and we are going to set the terms. That is part of a larger reconfiguration of relations between the global north and global south that makes the 1970s a [01:24:00] double whammy. Competition for the U.S. from industrial competitors and need to radically rethink the availability and cost of vital resources to prosperity. And that plunges the American economy into a very severe crisis.

It’s not just inflation, it’s the beginnings of massive deindustrialization of economic centers of the north and the Keynesian toolkit is no longer working. I have a idea, a theory of what I call political orders. And when a political order establishes itself, it is able to compel agreement from all parts of the relevant political spectrum. During the heyday of the New Deal order, the Keynesian tools were thought to be so powerful and so effective that when Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes the first Republican president to regain the presidency in 1952, the big question is he going to roll back the New Deal or is he going to endorse its core features? And he endorses its core features [01:25:00] because he feels there is no future for the GOP if he doesn’t do that. Well, that consensus explodes in the 1970s and these neoliberal ideas, versions of the neoclassical ideas that you talked about, which have been around and which had been incubating but had been utterly irrelevant to the conduct of American politics or of the American economy.

This is their moment when they can bid for power. They had a strategy for gaining power. They had think tanks. They were developing links between think tanks and politicians. They had a general who could command the field forces. Ronald Reagan was his name. They were ready for the opportunity that the 1970s gave them. In my theory of political orders, there are certain economic crises of such magnitude that they crack up the orthodoxy that have been dominant and allow ideas that have been considered till that [01:26:00] moment dangerously heterodox to enter the mainstream. This becomes the neoliberal moment of ascent.

Workers Without a Party Part 2 - Confronting Capitalism - Air Date 12-11-24

VIVEK CHIBBER - HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: Here's the way I would put it is that with the white working class, they were overly confident that that class has nowhere else to go.

And whatever white workers they lose, they can make up by bringing in what they call the minority vote. Right. By which they meant Blacks and Latinos, okay? Yeah. So how do you bring in the minority vote? Now this is interesting. All these people are white. The people, these political leaders. So they have to figure out, well, what do the minorities want?

And they turn to not Black or Latino. Union leaders, Latino community organizers, Latino working class people, they turn to those sections of the minority population who, A, they trust, and B, more importantly, who won't, uh, roil their overall program, which is a corporate based program. So when they say, okay, we're gonna compensate by bringing in more minority voters, [01:27:00] What they, who they turn to is elites within the minority population.

Now that means, if you, if you think that minority populations are just a homogenous blob, then of course you can just pick up anybody at random and say, Hey, what do you people want? Right. Okay. But if you, if they are, in fact, economically stratified if they have classes and therefore different interests.

It's going to matter who you're asking as to what would please black and Latino voters enough that they would come to the party. Yeah. Okay. So who do they ask? Well, they ask Black professionals, Latino professionals, the non profit sector, and the corporate class, right? Yeah. What is the instinctive worldview of those classes?

It is not going to be to say, you should provide jobs, hospitals, education, and housing to these folks. Yeah. Because they are themselves economically dominant in those classes. And if they're the professionals, they don't, they don't care. They care about their own lives, which is, [01:28:00] a life in which economic issues don't figure prominently, but the cultural slights do, the symbolism does, and that's what you said that you're trying to substitute cultural gifts for material ones.

Well, what's the material basis for that? Why? Because it's not rocket science, right? So it's because the minority advisors who they turn to, are themselves of the same class as the white suburbanites, who they're trying to woo in their new electoral strategy. And the result is, they not only leave the white working class behind, they leave the black and Latino working class behind too, and you are now reaping the fruits.

of that strategy. Now, of course, numerically, Blacks still preponderantly vote for the Democrats. The Latino vote is close to evenly split. It would be folly to ignore the fact that the shift within those populations is at a historic high towards the Republicans, and it's especially concentrated In the working class, and that's a huge dilemma for the Democrats now,

MELISSA NASCHEK: right?

And I think your [01:29:00] emphasis on economic stratification with those groups is so important, because the way that most post election analysis is done is they just treat, you know, they treat them exactly like we're criticizing. The Democrats for treating him, which is these homogenous blobs.

VIVEK CHIBBER - HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: Yeah, they'll say, you know, you're listening to an American commentator when they use the following expression.

Such and such policies hurt the poor and people of color. So people, people of color does not include classes within it, right? They're just assumed to be economically homogenous and. I should say this is an actively constructed trope by elites of color. Yeah. This notion that there are no classes amongst black Americans, there are no classes amongst Latinos is something that's been created by minority academics, upwardly mobile professionals, and the business community.

The only people who ever denied the existence of classes are the people on top.

MELISSA NASCHEK: Right. And I think as the Democrats are [01:30:00] trying to reckon with and understand what happened to Their so called demographic destiny, where racial minorities were going to just keep putting them in office in perpetuity. The right is also trying to craft a public narrative and explain their recent victory, which was unexpected, specifically in the, in this racial dimension.

And it's interesting listening to right wing commentators because they're also giving a lot of credit to culture and saying that. A big part of the reason that these voters are coming towards the Republican Party is because the Democrats don't represent their values anymore. So you know, I've been thinking about how we can respond, not just to the Democrats, [01:31:00] Narrative, but also the Republican narrative because I think it's equally important to explain why this dynamic is happening and explain why both sides aren't offering a real analysis of these dynamics,

VIVEK CHIBBER - HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: you know, the Republicans are advantaged by a couple of things.

And those are not deep advantages. One advantage in this election was that it was in substantial measure, the election itself, So, it's hard to imagine Kamala Harris winning this election, given the economic trends of the last four years. And you see anti incumbency being really powerful across the electoral universe right now, around the world.

MELISSA NASCHEK: Right.

VIVEK CHIBBER - HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: So, odds are, she was going to lose no matter what. But on, in the longer term. What's been happening is that the Republicans have a second advantage, which is that not only the Democrats not delivered anything to the [01:32:00] working class, but when it comes to the way they relate, the way they present themselves to the poor, it's one of two ways, right?

If it's white workers, There's a substantial amount of derision and open condescension towards them. Right? Right. That you have to rid yourself. I saw this ad, I remember, it was on somewhere in, on YouTube or something, where essentially it was saying to people, You have an opportunity, a historic opportunity, to elect the first Black female president and I thought so the way you approach the electorate is not by telling them what you can do for them But what they can do for you, right and it encapsulated perfectly The way that the Democrats have reacted to their defeats of the past two or three electoral cycles, which is when you lose elections, you blame the electorate.

This is, this is really amazing, which is you tell them that they had a chance to step up to the plate and do something good and they failed you. [01:33:00] That encapsulates for the working class, especially the white working class, an incredible condescension, right? And then when you see the intelligentsia, if you look at MSNBC, if you look at CNN, all the, the, the major networks, when they talk about, The poor, how do they talk about them?

The poor are riven with these cultural deficiencies. They're racist, they're misogynist, they're imperialist, blah, blah, blah. Now, how do you expect them to react? On the one hand, you're not giving them anything. And on the other hand, while you're not giving them anything, you tell them they deserve nothing, right?

Because they're morally inferior. Now, when it comes to the minorities, then, you're not giving them very much, except quite literally, some letters. So you turn Latino into Latinx and you think that's going to win over, it's going to bring voters to you. So obviously, when the language you're speaking is the language of highly credentialed, overly educated, poorly socialized academics or professionals.

All the while doing nothing [01:34:00] for people's material lives. It's a, it's a very, one might say, toxic package, right? Yeah. That there's no sense in which they can connect to you. Now, you'd ask, how does the left react to that? The only way you react to that is, of course, first of all, more than anything else, you actually have to show that the party will fight for you.

It'll actually fight for you and do something for you. Right. But while it's doing that, your activists, your politicians, your candidates, they have to speak to them in normal, everyday language, not like they're coming out of some identitarian boot camp. Neither of those things is happening. So I think until people who call themselves leftists do away with the condescension and the derision and understand that material needs are not something that's gauche or vulgar but real, you won't get anything out of it.

SECTION C: CROSSED WIRES

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Up next section C crossed wires with a focus on some of the potential changes happening within the Republican party.

Democratic Dealignment w Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor Part 3 - The Dig - Air Date 11-9-24

DANIEL DENVER - HOST, THE DIG: I want to ask you about a major, uh, An increasingly weird [01:35:00] ideological challenge. I think we face exemplified by the role of Elon Musk on the Trumpist far right. And I think, I think it's important, including in terms of multiracial working class dealignment, because in the absence of a left populist alternative, what we're seeing, I think, is neoliberalism remaking So many people into wannabe entrepreneurs aspiring to make money from crypto or landlord ism any sort of escape from wage labor health through through hustling hard, achieving the new American dream of passive income.

What? What do you?

KEEANGA-YAMAHTTA TAYLOR: That's that's what Harris was offering, right?

DANIEL DENVER - HOST, THE DIG: Yeah. So

KEEANGA-YAMAHTTA TAYLOR: crypto and weed.

DANIEL DENVER - HOST, THE DIG: Yeah, that was to black men.

KEEANGA-YAMAHTTA TAYLOR: Yeah.

DANIEL DENVER - HOST, THE DIG: What do you? Ridiculous. What do you make of this? This fierce attachment, uh, this fierce attachment to these avatars of American capitalism at the very moment when people feel more crushed by American capitalism than ever.

And what kind of, like, model for being in the world [01:36:00] Are we putting forward as an alternative?

KEEANGA-YAMAHTTA TAYLOR: It feels like, it feels like the only way out, man. I will tell you one of the first demonstrations I went to when I moved to Chicago in the late 90s, early aughts. It was, um, Jesse Jackson organized this protest.

There was a public school that was across the street from a brand new juvenile, uh, jail that was huge. White, it looked, it mirrored building, it took up, I think, two or three city blocks, and it towered over everything. And so he had called this protest at an elementary school, um, because they only had one functioning toilet.

And so they would, the teachers in the building, would organize the students on the second [01:37:00] floor to make a trip down to the basement to use the bathroom once or twice a day. And so Jackson was drawing attention to the obvious contradiction of this multi million dollar facility. To jail black kids and this public school that had one functioning toilet in the basement.

And so why is basketball, boxing, MMA, wrapping? Why is all this pop? It's a way out. It's a way out. When. Nothing else seems to work in which you can't plausibly imagine anything working. If you go into your average working class black neighborhood school, there is no way in most of these schools that you walk in with any [01:38:00] expectation that you can walk out and be set on the path to success.

To having the kind of quality of life for you, for your family. No one thinks that. The jobs that are available to young black people just like the jobs that are available to young working class, rural, poor white people offer you no future, no hope. We wonder why there are deaths by despair, whether they are black people in despair or white people.

In despair, it's because we live in a society where there is no hope and it's true. It is absolutely true. People are bonded to debt with no job that can pay that debt. So it means a lifetime of shitty work that you don't want to do [01:39:00] that is meaningless. And that is the future that they have made for us.

So much so that Kamala Harris talked about for five minutes. A 5 percent rent cap until she realized that actually you can't guarantee something like that, right? Especially if you want to surround yourself with the Mark Cubans of the world, with the nice billionaires, the liberal billionaires, like they don't want to be hearing about rent caps.

And so we live in a society that guarantees you. The right to a job, can't pay your bills, to a place to live, that the rise in rent is unchecked, that a landlord can charge you anything he determines you're able to pay, that sees an increase in evictions, that [01:40:00] underfunds every aspect of its public sector.

And then we wonder why you want to be a rapper. You want to be a basketball player. You want to be Elon Musk. Who the hell doesn't want to be a billionaire when that is your social reality? And so clearly the way that you transform that is that people have to have hope that their lives can be different.

And hope is not a cheap religiosity that some divine intervention can change this. It's a union job. It's more than a living wage. It is capped rent, right? It's rent. That's 20% of your income. It's parks, it's libraries, it's healthcare. It's free college, not student loans, free college. It's transportation, it's vacation.

It's like peace of mind. It's quiet. It's connection. It's [01:41:00] friendships. It's relationships. That is what supplants. The stupidity of the kind of vapid, venal, billionaire psychosis with, you know, Trump and his gold sneakers, Elon Musk and his rocket phallus. You know, like, these are cartoon figures, but that they are animated through the hopelessness of the society as the way that it is.

And we know this. We know this as a society. That's why people have the polls with the huge majorities who want to use our public resources to make people's lives better. Like, ordinary people recognize this. If you, if you have a good life, you know, like, that is the secret to a long and meaningful life.

But that's hard to achieve in this society. for listening. That's hard to achieve in a society that [01:42:00] promises you absolutely nothing except the right or capacity to find a job that is utterly meaningless and that can't afford you or your family members a decent quality of life. And, you know, that's, I mean, that, that's what this struggle, uh, is about is, is how to have a good life and not a life of debt and meaningless work.

Strategist says young men feel rejected by the Democratic Party - MSNBC - Air Date 11-16-24

symone Sanders-Townsend - Host, MSNBC: Well, I heard from some of the, you know, the, the, the very fancy political streets that bro culture was actually like taking the term bro culture was, is, is, is to young men that Latin X is to the Hispanic and Latino community. I just want to throw down the table. Is that true? Like the bro culture, is it a backlash?

Let's talk about bro culture.

TERRANCE WOODBURY: I mean, look, I, I, I certainly don't feel like I'm a part of a bro culture, but there is a, there is a manosphere, right? There's a manosphere where, where these conversations are happening, where there, there [01:43:00] are conversations that are not happening in mainstream media, uh, conversations about masculinity, about how masculinity is evolving.

I get these, these texts from my dad and, and what's at groups all the time about how what we are eating is reducing masculinity. I'm like, dad, I promise it's not because I ate avocados , but, but that, right? So, so there is an environment. Um, where conversations are happening that Democrats are going to have to penetrate.

But when we get there, we're going to have to have a different conversation. And some of these conversations are complicated, right? This is what we talk about. We're claiming values like masculinity and spirituality. What does masculinity look like in a Democratic Party? Right. What is the role of masculinity?

It's not all toxic, but

MSNBC HOST: it's not. See, that's the problem. So I think you just jumped onto a false narrative. It's not about what masculinity is in a political party. It's what's masculinity in our culture and society. That's right. What does it mean for a young man to grow into a father to grow into a productive member of our community?

So this whole bro culture [01:44:00] bs It's a psychological warp game with young men telling them that they got to, you know, have a particular attitude about women. They got to look at, they got to look at situations, um, you know, through this lens where, you know, Josh Holly and others, Hey, we're going to shine some light on our groin and we're going to become more men.

What, what the hell are we talking about here? I found interesting

AARON SMITH: in our research is we asked young men, what does it mean to be a man? Number one thing was protecting your family. Number two thing was honesty. So this is a complicated group. There's 25 million young men. I wouldn't put them all in a box.

So they just

MSNBC HOST: voted for someone who is, in terms of protecting the family, is going to break up families. And in terms of being honest, hello, we're talking about Donald Trump here.

AARON SMITH: That's my point. There are young men who voted for Kamala Harris, who have concerns about feminism. And there are young men who voted for Donald Trump, who support abortion rights.

This is this true [01:45:00] swing group. You know, 7 million of them voted for Joe Biden in 2020. They can go back, but we have to We have to speak to them and realize that they're not fitting into these boxes that we're used to.

MSNBC 2: So after the election, you had a briefing, Young Men's Research Initiative, and your researcher said two things that I've been thinking about a lot.

One is that people say like, well, who listens to three hours of Joe Rogan? People who stock groceries, people who drive trucks, like it becomes a parasocial relationship. But also this idea that Democrats are so focused on the policy and the messaging and that is one piece of things and that is for the party to contend with.

But what your researcher said is, so long as whatever that policy and whatever that message is, is being filtered through the kaleidoscope of the media that folks are consuming, not just young men, right, just this powerful media force. They will find a way to say, well, doesn't that message from Democrats isn't for you, that policy from Democrats isn't for you.

So there's also from an infrastructure perspective in the progressive space, someone has to deal with the kaleidoscope [01:46:00] either by penetrating the kaleidoscope or by saying, here's some alternate forms of media where, yeah, we, it's fun and it's entertaining. And we talk about culture and we don't jam the vegetables into your mouth.

We understand you're a full person with a full life, and we can talk to you that way. Look, there goes the

AARON SMITH: avocado. Let's talk about, let's talk about the investment problem. It's a fruit. If you, if you go to the Democratic Party's website right now, they have a web, a page on who we serve. And it lists 16 different groups.

It says women, seniors, rural Americans. One group that's not mentioned is men. And I don't think that Democratic leaders are saying we are not for men. But the message is, is getting across. If you look at Dollar spent. Donald Trump in this campaign outspent Dems 4 to 1 in terms of online ads targeting young men, 10 to 1 in swing states.

So there's clearly an investment problem, and then we need to start thinking about these distribution channels. How do we actually get through the kaleidoscope and get those [01:47:00] messages that we want to be heard? to young men.

TERRANCE WOODBURY: A part of my concern, though, is not just that the Democratic, what you describe as like the Democratic message is not for these men, it's that far too often it feels like Democrats are saying those men are not for us, right?

If they don't, the partisan, the progressive puritanism, right? I tell people all the time in my household, my father is the head of household and my mother agreed with that, right? That there's that in a culture that has raised men to believe that men are head of household when they have questions about a woman as president.

It doesn't mean that they're no longer our voter. It means we have to engage them in a tough conversation about why, why, why the role, why gender roles are evolving, why our country is evolving. It's the same thing Barack Obama did in 2000 and eight. He didn't tell every white person that had bias. You're not my voter.

He engaged them in a conversation about how his grandmother, the person he loved the most, held bias to. And that's what Democrats are not doing. We are rejecting these men who have, who have opinions that are different than us, [01:48:00] who have, who don't hold our, our progressive puritanism and we're telling them that they're no longer our voter.

We don't want you here if you don't leave with your pronouns. We don't want you here. If you don't, uh, believe that a woman should be president, as opposed to our country is evolving, there's a role for you in it, and this is what it's going to look like.

AARON SMITH: One other thing that Obama did,

symone Sanders-Townsend - Host, MSNBC: was he showed

AARON SMITH: up everywhere.

I remember seeing Obama at world wrestling events, and he would talk to anyone, and he had that approach. The other thing is, I think we need to do a better job of listening. to what is going on online and what young men are saying. This is a rapidly changing landscape. The world in 2026 or 2028 could look very different.

And the first time voters there in high school right now. So we need to be prepared. It's not just the battle we're fighting right now. It's It's keeping our eye on what's going on so we understand what's coming.

symone Sanders-Townsend - Host, MSNBC: I think this head of household, um, uh, piece that you hit on and, and, and you and Aaron are dovetailing.

I, I really think that there is something there. [01:49:00] Y'all remember the weekend before the election, Wes, Governor Moore of Maryland came on our show and he talked about, you know, men need to stand up for their households, he said, and that is how he put it. Um, and He framed it as, you know, as a man, if you're the head of your household, like these are the things, you know, that I'm talking to men about in this election and what I've heard is that, um, some, some voters have felt that maybe the language that was used to speak about, um, men and, and, uh, in this election was a little condescending.

It's like, let's talk to the men. Um, and, and, and maybe we all need to rethink it. But I really think that when I talk to folks and they're like, oh, well, people just didn't want to vote for a woman. What you're saying is right, Terrence. In a culture where men have been young, young men and boys are raised to be the head of their household and they're saying, well, I don't know if a woman can be president.

We can't write that off. We need to engage it. It is painful though, because it's just like your mama raised you, but you, you don't think she, your mama been telling you what to do your whole life, but now you don't want, you don't want a woman running the country. It's painful, but you [01:50:00] got to have those conversations is what I'm hearing.

TERRANCE WOODBURY: That's right. And these are going to be painful conversations, but there's a way to get to, to hold our progressive values, right? Hold our progressive values and, and, and, and message them through these types of these types of lenses. Look, as the head of my household, it is incumbent upon me to protect my family from a government that tells a, that tells my wife or daughter, Who they can and cannot be.

If God grants everyone freedom of choice, then why should government grant my daughter any less than that? That is a different lens, that's a religious lens, a masculine lens for the exact same progressive values. We can do both.

How Democrats Can Win Back The Working Class Part 2 - Lever Time - Air Date 11-8-24

DAVID SIROTA: Yeah, uh, I absolutely agree. The idea of a smarter authoritarian whose personal behavior doesn't get in the way of implementing the authoritarian agenda, that is J. D. Vance. And his code switch, uh, in the debate to sort of normal guy. I think that, I mean, my take on Vance is it took him a very long time on the campaign trail to realize that he would be [01:51:00] more effective by code switching to normal guy rather than like MAGA base guy.

It was really weird, actually, because he was already the VP nominee, meaning he wasn't in a primary. And yet he was sort of running in the general as a as a primary presidential candidate appealing mostly to the base Something in his brain Switched or he got a good piece of advice. Hey, wait a minute I'm already in the general election.

I'm going to use this debate to code switch to like general election, normal guy. And it was really effective. And I think the answer is, and I say this not loving the answer because I don't want my kids to go to school and in a school that feels unsafe or where there are visible signs of security. But I unfortunately think that we have to increase security.

In our schools, we have to make the doors lock better. We have to make the door stronger. We've got to make the windows stronger. And of course, we've got to increase school resource officers because the idea that we can magically wave a wand and take guns out of the [01:52:00] hands of bad guys, it just doesn't fit with recent experience.

So we've got to make our schools safer. And I think we've got to have some common sense, bipartisan solutions for how to do that. Vance is just as, if not more, Dangerous than Trump because he, he comes off as a relatively normal person.

JEFF WEAVER: And I think he has an ideological foundation. You know, Trump doesn't really have an ideological foundation.

I mean, he's authoritarian. He jumps all over the place. It's not a coherent ideology that underpins his policies, but for the Vance, the risk

DAVID SIROTA: Vance. Vance has a way he sees the world. He's got a narrative that he tells. I mean, I just saw him, I saw a clip of him on Rogan, by the way, uh, talking about how the railroad companies hate him, uh, because he's the one who's called them out for socializing the costs of their misbehavior.

So I talked about this train disaster in East Palestine and, you know, the railroad companies hate me because I kind of went on a crusade against them afterwards. And what I realized is, think [01:53:00] of all the costs. of that disaster. Think of the healthcare costs, the welfare costs from people who lost their jobs, the declining home values in that community, just all of the costs absorbed by that community.

And the railroads are paying slap on the hand fines. And it sort of occurred to me that the reason they're not more serious about these train disasters is because they're privatizing the rewards, but when a major train disaster who picks up the tab. It's the local residents and it's the American taxpayer.

And that's something that fundamentally has to change. I listened to it and I was like Okay, this guy has a real analysis of the world, and I think that that raises another question. This realignment, if there is a realignment, there certainly was a realignment in the election. If this realignment is happening, are there opportunities for actual good populist policy to happen?

Under [01:54:00] a Trump Vance administration. And are you even allowed to say that there are possibilities for good things to happen, uh, without fear of being called like a Trump appeaser or a Trump supporter or, right, right. Like, like, like, like, are we allowed to even talk about this?

JEFF WEAVER: Right, right. Well, look, I, look, I do, I do think people want more, uh, honest talk.

Or what they perceive as honest talk and less sort of partisan talking points. Uh, so I mean, you know, let's be completely honest about it, you know, when COVID, uh, happened and places were being shut down, you know, it was Trump signed the PPP. It was Trump that signed off on the initial round of checks to people to keep them afloat during the, you know, Biden continued it wisely.

Um, but that certainly didn't happen in the 2000 and. Nine time period. Uh, those checks weren't going out to people. So, uh, you know, so there were, you know, like there were good things that happened. [01:55:00] Um, and you know, there are people on the, uh, among Democrats and Democrats worked on the PPP as well. I've been card and other people worked on that as well.

You know, Bernie was certainly out there pounding the table for a more direct payment relief to people. So, um, You know, are there ways where, where, where you, where you can do that? I mean, you know, the problem is, is that much of Trump's populism is a fae populism, right? Right. Uh, so when you get to tax policy and you get to deregulatory policy in some areas, you know, it's gonna be a complete corporate giveaway.

It's gonna be the reinforcing of the, of the corporate, uh, benefits.

DAVID SIROTA: C can we go back to the election for, for one more moment on that? Yeah, sure. The, the, the Latino vote, I mean, the Latino vote was in. A particularly big shift. And I think there are a lot of people who may be listening to this saying, I don't understand how the Latino vote shifted to Donald Trump when he ran all of these immigration ads [01:56:00] that That were in a lot of ways code for, uh, we don't like Latinos.

I mean, I, I, I, I think there's a, there's like a border argument on, on the, the policy of immigration. And then I think there's also, uh, you know, uh, at a deeper level, Donald Trump coding a kind of. Anti Latino or pro white message to white people by talking about border policy, right? It's, it's sort of dog whistle.

So I think a lot of people will look at the election results and be like, I don't understand. Donald Trump is like dog whistling anti Latino messages to white people. And he's rewarded by having an upsurge in voter turnout. Latino voters voting for him. What do you make of that?

JEFF WEAVER: You know, we had tremendous success in bernie's two campaigns really with latino voters I mean far beyond what anybody thought was possible.

I mean california in a fractured field You remember there was three [01:57:00] million candidates on the ballot california bernie got 50 percent of latino vote in california. So um You know, the Latino community itself is wildly fractured. So, you know, Central Americans and Mexicans on one hand versus Venezuelans and Cubans, you know, they're very, very different communities.

So let's talk a little bit about, um, Latino community in a sort of the Southwest part of the United States of sort of largely Central American and, um, uh, and Mexican, uh, uh, descent. You know, there were some, I did notice during the campaign, there were some subtle, you know, Changes in Trump's rhetoric at times where he started there was I remember one in particular he said well It's not really it's not just Latinos coming over as people from other places coming over people coming over from the Middle East people coming over from Africa and you know trying to I think it's some small way split some hairs Look Latinos like every generation of immigrant communities It's highly aspirational and if you could speak to those aspirations Transcriptions You will [01:58:00] get their support and that's what he did.

He spoke to their aspirations. Now, who's going to follow through on it? Probably not. Bernie spoke to their aspirations and, you know, it was also rewarded electorally. Um, the, the Democrats didn't have anything to say other than high prices. Um, and I think that's why they failed. You know, housing, housing's a mess, you know, the cost of housings.

Apartments are expensive. Houses are expensive. The interest rates are crazy. Uh, you know, at some point we should also talk, you know, another this show, because we don't have time, but, you know, the, the impact of high interest rates as an element of inflation and, um, the cost burden that people are feeling, you know, you, You remember during COVID when the credit card balances of America overall went down substantially people, I think there was periods where we had the lowest credit card debt we had had in a long time.

Now, those balances are higher than they've ever been. So people went from an environment where, uh, they, they were paying down their debt. To one in which because of high costs, uh, they were at high [01:59:00] interest rates, you know, more and more of their income is being eaten up by credit card bills and people paying 20 to 25, 28, even these are people with decent credit getting paying 28 percent on credit cards.

Uh, and what does that do to people's buying power?

The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order (with Gary Gerstle) Part 3 - Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer - Air Date 1-14-25

Nick Hanauer: very good strategy.

Anyway. Let’s talk about where are we now. Where are we now?

GARY GERSTLE: We’re in a whole lot of trouble.

Nick Hanauer: Yeah, that’s true.

GARY GERSTLE: For left liberal forces, this is a big defeat, but it’s not the end of the story.

Goldy: It’s not the end of history because I’ve-

GARY GERSTLE: It’s not the end of history. It’s not the end of the story. It’s not the end of the search for a post-neoliberal paradigm. Volatility still rules our moment, and it’s clear Trump… First of all, it’s not clear what Trump’s policies are going to look like economically. He also does not have the kinds of majorities that Roosevelt or Reagan had to usher in a different kind of political economy to the [02:00:00] degree that I think some of his supporters would like to accomplish. Let me first say that 2016 is a moment of real change in the United States and that it’s the moment that really breaks the hold of the neoliberal orthodoxy. You have Trump on the right and Bernie Sanders on the left, and it’s a one two combo that sort of explodes the neoliberal synthesis, privileging free trade, free movement of people, free flow of information, free movement of capital.

Those two figures are diametrically opposed in many respects but if you listen to a Trump and Sanders speech on the evils of free trade and why we should move away from a globalized world of free trade for the sake of some kind of fair or trade, some of their speeches are indistinguishable from each other. Until that moment, a protectionism had been a dirty word. If you utter, if you were [02:01:00] identified as a protectionist in American politics, you were out of the mix. Trump levies many tariffs and Biden doesn’t remove them. And the 2020 election is very important because it unveils an alliance between the left and center of the Democratic Party to really break from–Biden breaks under the influence of Sanders from his democratic predecessors, both Obama, and Clinton. And there’s a major effort to rethink the proper relationship of states to markets of what governments can do to control direct markets in the public interest. And this is where the middle-out discussion and synthesis began.

The Biden administration had major, major initiatives in this area. One of the mysteries to Me, and maybe you have an answer for it because I don’t have a good answer for it, is why these major initiatives of the Biden administration [02:02:00] have garnered so little popular support. Here I have in mind the reshoring of chips manufacturing, the trillion-dollar infrastructure project and the biggest investment in green energy in this country’s history.

Nick Hanauer: I think the answer is that nobody knew.

Goldy: It didn’t impact people. You have a political system where we have elections every two years, and you had an economic agenda which will take a decade, maybe decades to fully benefit people. This is a problem with democratic politics in general. You’re elected short-term, but the policies that you really need to do are long-term. And the fact that we had a New Deal order for so long allowed us to build all this infrastructure and build these social programs that paid off for decades. And now there’s no consensus on anything. If you’re going to switch [02:03:00] policies every two to four years, you’ll never get anything done.

SECTION D: SOLUTIONS

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally section D solutions.

Workers Without a Party Part 3 - Confronting Capitalism - Air Date 12-11-24

MELISSA NASCHEK: But I think this brings us to something we are going to have to wrestle with, which is what can the left do in this current political climate?

Because to what you're saying about the way that the Democrats have really pursued the professional managerial class, and they code that as. The suburban vote, but we all kind of know what that means. How can the left relate in a productive way to the Democratic Party? I think especially because in American politics, you just have no choice.

But to have some sort of relationship to electoral politics, it's so central to the American political scene. On the other hand, we're talking about all these elements of the [02:04:00] Democratic Party that are really about fighting for a continued strengthening of capital and certain elements of the capitalist class.

So I think that presents kind of a conundrum for the left.

VIVEK CHIBBER - HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: Yeah, it does. There are no easy answers. When you sit and think. objectively about what you're up against. If you're a social Democrat, an actual social Democrat or a socialist, it's daunting. The basic dilemma is exactly as you've laid it out, which is the Democratic Party is a party of elites.

And that presents a challenge to anybody trying to engage in politics through that party if they're on the left. But at the same time, the left cannot veer too far away from the Democratic Party because they become totally isolated. And We have since the 80s, the socialist left was in this sectarian wilderness where they were essentially little study groups on campuses getting crazier and crazier [02:05:00] every five years and more, more and more self satisfied, but more and more, uh, I think out of touch with what politics, not just strategy, but they became fundamentally, I think the socialist left by the 2010s was profoundly apolitical.

They had no idea what politics is. Okay. So you want to avoid that at all costs. How do you do that? You have to, in some way, kind of be guppies swimming around what the closest party is to your politics, which happens to sadly be the Democratic Party. Right. All right. So that being the case. What do you do?

I do not think that in the short term, there's any chance of actually changing the party. We don't have the strength and the parties has, it's, it's a weak party by historical standards, but compared to the strength of the left, it's very, very strong. All right. So that means then you have to have some kind of strategy where you use the party because it gives you [02:06:00] entree into people's living rooms, into their workplaces and into their consciousness and you try to fight.

For issues that you know people care about, but which the party isn't giving them. But you've, that's what, and that's, that's what Sanders did. But there's a second component to this, which is, I think, really important. There is this, I, I think there's a fantasy out there that says, if Sanders could just run again, or if another Sanders type candidate ran again, and we did it better, maybe you could win office.

If you build

MELISSA NASCHEK: it, they will come.

VIVEK CHIBBER - HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: Uh, yeah, it's a version of that, you know? And I, I think people are forgetting the, negative lesson of the Sanders campaign, which is that I do not think there is an electoral road to social democracy. If you think the way you do it is by from 30, 000 feet, issuing a program and hoping that it will energize people so that they come to the poll and vote for you because the fundamental, there's two basic problems [02:07:00] with this.

One is that most of your constituency. doesn't believe you. Most of the American working class, even when you show them that program, will say, yeah, it'll never happen. Yeah. Most of them have given up. Most of them don't vote. And the ones who do vote are essentially going to say, I'd love to vote for you, but you can't win it.

How do we know that? In 2069 and 2020, in the states where Sanders lost, ballot initiatives around the issues he was fighting for kept winning over and over. What does that mean? People wanted Medicare for all, people wanted a minimum wage, they just thought he would not be able to deliver it because once he got into office, either he'd be handcuffed or he'd never be allowed to get into office.

MELISSA NASCHEK: Which might not have been a terrible assumption, honestly.

VIVEK CHIBBER - HOST, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM: I think it was.

So, first of all, the cynicism, you can't overcome it. Secondly, you will never win against the bourgeois media. If you're trying to fight with them, because remember, the media isn't a [02:08:00] bunch of journalists trying to present the fact. It is the fourth or fifth largest corporate sector in America. And it's the media.

You saw when Sanders was running, they could no longer ignore him, but they went to plan B immediately, which was to deepen the cynicism of the public and tell them over and over, he's a great old man, he's a cranky old guy, love him, but he can never win. And here's why he'll never win. Now, when you present that to a population that's already dejected and cynical, it's hard.

And we saw that when he ran, Sanders kept saying over and over, I'm going to be able to. Achieve my goals because there's going to be a political revolution and what he meant by that was People are going to come out and they're going to vote for me because they see I'm going to fight for them And essentially what happened is they didn't come out now that means The road to changing the course of direction of the Democratic Party or politics isn't going to come through a more vigorous presentation of a populist economic agenda.[02:09:00]

The only way to do it is by integrating the left into the lives of working people so that they're not just coming door knocking every four years and telling them who to vote for. I mean, even that would be an achievement. You don't even have door knockers right now, but people think if we had door knockers, we could win.

And I'm telling you, you won't. You won't. The only way is if you also have organizations outside the Democratic Party who use the party when they can to gain visibility. to gain traction, but once that tide recedes of the election and the party leaves, you have to remain. You have to organize in the workplace and you've got to organize in the neighborhoods.

And that way, when the next election comes, even when they tell you it's not possible, or this guy's a liar or it can't work, you've got face to face interactions with people and you can actually communicate with them. You have to fit, you have to literally drag them out of their houses and bring them to the voting booth because they will not come otherwise.

Right. That means, so, just to [02:10:00] conclude here, Melissa, how do, how does the left react? There's, we have an opening right now. The opening is the class character, not just of the Democratic Party, but of what's called progressivism, the kind of intersectional miasma of crazed identitarianism, what's called wokishness and smatterings of economic justice.

This is what the corporate slash non profit complex has given us. And it is right now in retreat. It gives, I think, Real leftists, social democratic leftists, and opening to wage an ideological war, a propaganda war around what it means to be a progressive in America. That's a real step forward. For the first time we're not defensive in about five years.

Yeah. But, you cannot hang your hat on changing the Democratic Party. What you can do is fight within it to gain traction for yourself, but you have to use that party to build real organizations of the poor that are independent of that party. If you can do that, [02:11:00] then maybe in the next electoral cycle we can actually gain some traction, because I'm telling you, 2028 is going to be the Biden campaign redux.

And remember, Biden did not run on the policies that he eventually enacted. Right. He ran. As a I'm not Bernie candidate. It wasn't even I'm not Trump. I'm not Bernie Yeah So my prediction is we're going to see that in 2028 unless the left can reconstitute itself And fight within the party to drag it kicking and screaming towards a more populist agenda

Democratic Dealignment w Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor Part 4 - The Dig - Air Date 11-9-24

KEEANGA-YAMAHTTA TAYLOR: And this, you know, connects to what we were talking about earlier, which is how does the left become hospitable? And so in addition to that, I think we have to think about what are the entry points? How do we create on ramps, entry points into organization? Into discussions about this. And this is to me an important part of left culture that has to be regenerated, which is one [02:12:00] of political discussion and debate.

There are so many questions that not not just questions that people have that. Oh, You know, we're here to answer, but questions about politics, questions about history, questions about how do we, how did we get here questions about the nature of our society. And no place to engage with them. And so again, it means that the space within which these discussions happen are with Fox news, with cable news, those are the places where those discussions are happening.

And so of course you can get a podcast or you can, you know, get, uh, some kind of forum online, but this is, this is fundamentally different from bringing together. people together to talk about these things and then not just to talk about them, but to figure out what it is that we do. And so [02:13:00] that's one part of it.

To me, that's just basic organization building. Uh, how do we create climate culture where people can engage in debate and discussion? But then there's the other part about it that, you know, Seems daunting and overwhelming and who knows how to do this, but I mean, there's so many examples, but if this election season does not demonstrate that we have to figure out what the alternative to this Democratic Party is.

Like a real third party. I don't know what, what else needs to happen to demonstrate that. I mean, that in and of itself is a debate, right? Can we just take over the democratic party? I'm, I'm deeply skeptical, uh, about our ability. Uh, to do that because the Democratic Party is a party as a party is, is really a figment of our imagination.[02:14:00]

Um, it's, it's not a Democratic Party. It's not a party in which, uh, ordinary people can come into it, uh, act as a rank and file, um, and dictate, uh, and determine what the direction of that party is.

DANIEL DENVER - HOST, THE DIG: The Republican and Democratic parties wouldn't qualify as political parties in any other electoral democracy.

No,

KEEANGA-YAMAHTTA TAYLOR: exactly. Exactly. And so the idea that, well, it's too hard to create an alternative. And so what we really need to do, uh, is focus on the transformation, uh, of, of the democratic party. I just, I don't see any precedent for that. I don't see. A route to that. And so while I can agree that a viable third party seems and feels very impossible, I don't know if it's any more impossible than the idea that somehow we can transform this utterly [02:15:00] corporate, utterly bought and paid for undemocratic party.

That we can transform that. I don't I don't see the route to that. And so I also think that creating a third party alternative is not something that you can just map out, create an outline. And, you know, we take 123 steps. We'll be there. I think that it's possible in a situation like we had in 2020 where you have millions of people, um, who are activated, who are marching and desperately trying to do something.

But I don't know exactly what the route is to doing that. I do know that That the Democratic Party, I don't believe is a receptacle that [02:16:00] we can take over and change. And yet, the sentiment and the desire for a vehicle that can bridge that gap that we talked about earlier. between what it is that people want and what is necessary to achieve it.

The desire for that exists, and we have to figure out what is the route to making that happen. What is the mechanism that is necessary to make that a possibility? Because this, this is not, this ain't it.

DANIEL DENVER - HOST, THE DIG: I'm not at all optimistic about taking over or transforming the Democratic Party, but I'm Maybe even more Pessimistic at least about the short or medium terms for a third party Both of us have been around for a while and I would put out as just like what I would argue is a stark point of comparison nadir 2000 which was my first big electoral involvement I was 17, I [02:17:00] couldn't vote, but I threw everything into that campaign.

I went to the mega rallies, it felt like the earth was moving beneath my feet. And then he couldn't even get 5%, I think he got 2 or 3 or something. And then, Bernie 2020 and 2016, running within the party, mobilized so many millions more people. To a left vision than we ever had been able to before, and certainly more than Nader did in 2000, which was really the high watermark for left third waterism, and it was a low high watermark.

So, I, my worry about third partyism is attempting to do that without building the organized workplace and social power first. First will be a sort of. cul de sac in which we pour a lot of energy without much result and please the Democratic Party in doing so because I [02:18:00] think that they would prefer us not to run Bernie's.

KEEANGA-YAMAHTTA TAYLOR: No, I, I completely, an initiative around a third party can't be a boutique project of a handful of left sex, uh, who want to get together Um, and then who can't agree on even like what to put on the agenda, right? Like that, that, that can't be the, the vision. Um, and so that, that's sort of what I meant when I was saying that it has to be something born out of a mass political situation, um, in the first place.

And yet also. There has to be organizing in the interim, because we know that in the midst of tens of millions of people, uh, uh, marching and, and being activated, you can't just throw, Oh, now we're going to have a third party, you know, you can't just throw that [02:19:00] together. And so I'm not a hundred percent clear, but I do know that Bernie's run.

In 2020, in particular, showed the potential on the one hand, but it also showed the extent to which the democratic party will close ranks in a heartbeat. To destroy an alternative in its midst. There's, you know, the working families party, which exists as a thing, but that also seems to also function, um, as an apparatus of the democratic party and not necessarily as an independent entity.

And so I don't know exactly what process or procedure we would look at To change these dynamics. But I do know that there is a desperate desire for a political alternative. [02:20:00] And it's not Trump will attract some people, but the bigger issue. Is just the bottom falling out and people just being frittered into the ether.

The failures of liberals and the Left have helped Trump's rise Part 2 - The Marc Steiner Show - Air Date 10-30-24

BILL FLETCHER JR.: Well, the one thing mark is that the white working class's gravitation to MAGA has been actually exaggerated

MARC STEINER - HOST, THE MARC STEINER SHOW: okay,

BILL FLETCHER JR.: the MAGA is a white movement overall it is Deeply rooted as was the tea party In the middle strata, and, uh, and that includes kind of the upper element of the working class.

MARC STEINER - HOST, THE MARC STEINER SHOW: Okay,

BILL FLETCHER JR.: but it's not like the white working class is sort of disproportionately pro MAGA compared to other segments of white folks. And I think that that's important because if you don't get that, you can end up coming up with wrong strategy about how to deal with [02:21:00] this as well as who are potential enemies and friends.

Thanks. That that we're dealing with the the other thing is that there is opposition all over the country Um, but it's largely in small groups There are groups Ranging from at the national level the working families party to the local level groups like new virginia majority Or florida rising, right? So there are these groups that are there They are unfortunately less than the sum of their parts And, and that what we have not been able to accumulate is something that I've, I've dreamed about for years, which is a new rainbow coalition.

MARC STEINER - HOST, THE MARC STEINER SHOW: Yeah,

BILL FLETCHER JR.: and, uh, that was, that was thinking at the national level and that also was aiming to build power at the state levels. Now, some of the groups I [02:22:00] mentioned are trying. New Virginia majority in Florida rising. I know that they're trying. They're trying to build this work and I'm not here to criticize them, but I think it's important to, you know, as, as the man said, tell no lies, claim no easy victories.

We have to be clear that we. I'm not where we should be. That's all. So, um, and, and I think that the, the, we, we have failed to understand that the right wing, the extreme right, or elements within it developed a multi decades plan to win and our movement, the left and progressive folks, have really vacillated on issue of fighting for power.

You know, it's like, like when we often think about and have thought, particularly since the seventies about fighting for power, it's either utopian in a sense of the only thing we can do is fight for socialism, that there's no intermediate thing. [02:23:00] Or, uh, you get this, Variations of abstentionism or what the green party is doing and and with all due respect to them And and so I think that that's that's what infuriates me that we've wasted an immense amount of time Because we don't pay attention as a movement to strategy Strategy and

MARC STEINER - HOST, THE MARC STEINER SHOW: organization.

So Rick, you want to jump in? I'm gonna, I'm gonna expand on what you just said there, Bill, but what are you about to say, Rick?

RICK PERLSTEIN: Why don't you, uh, why don't you take the lead there, Mark, and I'll go where you go.

MARC STEINER - HOST, THE MARC STEINER SHOW: Okay, fine. Um, so, so the question is then, what, what can and should be the response at the moment?

I mean, if, if we see in the next few days that the MAGA right has seized power, political power in Washington, um, or even if they don't and the Democrats should win. The struggle is still going to be really intense and probably more intense, uh, whichever way it goes, but it'll take [02:24:00] different forms. So, um, what were you about to say, Rick?

RICK PERLSTEIN: Yeah, um, so I, you know, I do this weekly column in the American Prospect, my one that I just filed for Wednesday. It's called, What Will You Do? And it's a series of questions about what all sorts of people will do. Should, um, I didn't really get into this, should either Trump win or, um, some kind of low grade civil war, you know, kind of happen in the next few months and, you know, the kind of questions I ask are kind of existentialist ones, you know, the kind of thing a Camus or a Sartre might come up with, you know, uh, in a moment of, you know, resistance that many of us may face choices that may be life changing.

You know, if you are a government bureaucrat and you're asked to sign off on some, you know, deportation order, you know, if you find yourself on a jury and one of these [02:25:00] abortion trafficking laws passes, like the one that's pending in Tennessee, which makes it illegal to drive someone over, over the border to get an abortion.

And And, you know, some grandma's, you know, arrested driving her granddaughter and, and she goes to court and she's nailed dead to rights. Are you going to be a jury nullifier? Right? Uh, if you're a cop, if you're a National Guard member, you know, if you are, um, I don't know, a bureaucrat at the National Security Administration, uh, I mean, the, um, the NSA, and you're asked to spy on one of Donald Trump's kids.

Right. opponents, right? So a lot of, you know, the organizational questions are, you know, profound and probably above my pay grade. But a lot of what will happen next is the kind of questions that, you know, all kind of citizens face under situations of authoritarianism. And as far as I can tell, this is the first time people have started asking these questions.

You know, um, there was, [02:26:00] you know, one piece, uh, by Bob Cutler and in the American prospect said, what about civil civil disobedience? Right? So, you know, what happens when all these things that we know can happen because the Trump people say they're going to happen? You know, what if they begin to, you know, mobilize the military, you know, to deport millions of people?

They can't do that without, um, complicity. And you start to think about that, you know, movie about Auschwitz, about the family that lives next, you know, like the, the, the, you know, the, the people who are just kind of living their lives over the other side of the fence. And I think everyone listening to this, you know, has to ask what kind of risks they're going to be willing to take.

Uh, and these are very hard questions, and they suddenly seem to kind of be dropping from the sky with no warning.

BILL FLETCHER JR.: What a build on that. You mentioned a movie. I, um, one of my favorite all time films,

MARC STEINER - HOST, THE MARC STEINER SHOW: Uh,

BILL FLETCHER JR.: with Burt Lancaster, Kurt Douglas, Ava Gardner, [02:27:00] and for your listeners and viewers that may not be aware of this, uh, the screenplay was Rod Serling from the Twilight Zone, 1963.

And it was interesting because it turns out that they were able to get access to the White House. Because Kennedy thought that the idea of a military coup was not beyond beliefs. He thought that the conditions were such that there could be a coup. But I mention it in part because of what you're saying, Rick.

That what's interesting in the film is that, is the role of individuals that make certain choices An admiral, for example, that decides I'm not going along with this coup. The director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, played by Kirk Douglas, basically agrees with his boss, Burt Lancaster, but is [02:28:00] absolutely opposed to violating the Constitution.

And so a lot will come down to, as you're saying, what individuals will do. But I would add this, In the absence of organization, it becomes much easier for individuals to collapse. And to feel isolated and that's why we, we need and Mark, you and I've been talking about this for years. We need organization, not small sectarian organizations, but we need organization.

We need a broad front that people can identify with. And look to because there will be, like you mentioned about, um, immigrants. So, one thing that was, was raised with me a few months ago was what if there was a repetition, if there was an attempt to deport, what if there was a repetition of a, of May day, 2006.

A day without immigrants when you had this massive [02:29:00] stay away, but that takes organization and so we've got to be thinking about organization in order to give people the backbone to take the stands that they need to take.

Credits

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: That's going to be it for today. As always keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about today's topic or our upcoming topics. We're working on the LA fires and the politics of water in the age of climate change, and looking at the apparent ceasefire in Israel and other updates from the region. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at 202-999-3991, or simply email me to [email protected]. The additional sections of the show included clips from Confronting Capitalism, The Dig, The Majority Report, Pitchfork Economics, MSNBC, Lever Time, and the Marc Steiner Show. Further details are in the show notes.

Thanks to everyone for listening. Thanks to Deon Clark and Erin Clayton for their research work for the show and participation in our bonus [02:30:00] episodes. Thanks to our Transcriptionist Quartet—Ken, Brian, Ben, and Lara—for their volunteer work helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work behind the scenes and her bonus show co-hosting. And thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships. You can join them by signing up today at bestoftheleft.com/support, through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple podcast app. Membership is how you get instant access to our incredibly good and often funny weekly bonus episodes, in addition to there being no ads and chapter markers in all of our regular episodes, all through your regular podcast player. You'll find that link in the show notes, along with the link to join our Discord community, where you can also continue the discussion. And don't forget to follow us on any and all social media platforms you might be counting these days.

So, coming to you from far outside the conventional wisdom of Washington DC, my name is Jay, and this has been the Best of the Left podcast coming to you twice weekly, thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show, from bestoftheleft.com.

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#1684 The Last Honest President: The imperfect life and legacy of Jimmy Carter (Transcript)

Posted by · January 18, 2025 4:01 PM

Air Date 1/18/2025

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast. We look back on Jimmy Carter's life and legacy as a lens through which to more clearly see and understand the current state of our politics, our incoming president, the Middle East, the climate and more. For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our top takes in about 50 minutes today, includes Past Present, The Brian Lehrer Show, Democracy Now!, Facepalm America, Holy Post, and Today Explained. Then, in the additional deeper dives half of the show, there'll be more in four sections: Section A- Historical Context, Section B- Foreign Policy, Section C- Christian Nationalism, and Section D- Republican Rat Fucking.

Episode 364: Jimmy Carter Part 1 - Past Present - Air Date 2-28-23

NICOLE HEMMER - HOST, PAST PRESENT: I think that it's important to keep Carter's presidency in the context of the particular moment in which he became president. That he wanted the presidency to be small and to not be cashing in and to not [00:01:00] be corrupt is very much a response to the Nixon administration and to Watergate and this idea that you needed to restore trust and confidence in American institutions. And that was far too big of a job for Carter to do. So it is not something that he necessarily succeeds at, but you can understand what he was trying to do and what he continued to try to do. And in some ways why he was the right person for the moment, because Americans had just seen this intensely corrupt and mean and at times really racist and antisemitic presidency.

And then here comes Carter, and he's modeling a very different way of approaching, not just the presidency, but things like foreign policy as well. I also think it matters that Ronald Reagan comes after him. And so Carter is often sort of redrawn in historical memory as the anti Reagan, right? Somebody who was like dowdy and was telling us to sacrifice and not calling for mourning in [00:02:00] America. When in fact he was, as Neil was saying earlier, he was like putting in place the conditions that would allow the Reagan presidency to thrive. Not only battling back against that image of the presidency as corrupt, but breaking the back of inflation, starting the trends toward deregulation and a kind of conservative politics and evangelical politics. A moral, sort of morality focused, if not morality obsessed politics that would follow in his stead.

NEIL YOUNG - HOST, PAST PRESENT: Yeah, and two of those points I want to build on, which is first, that absolutely, his idea that the American presidency should not be this, you know, elaborate pomp and circumstance demonstration, but there should be sort of a simple and small c way of being a president is absolutely shaped by Watergate and the era's sort of cultural sentiments.

It's also deeply tied to his faith. And you know, I just want to keep bringing us back to that because it's so core to him and who he is and understanding him. And I think, remember, you know, this is a president who wore sweaters and turned the thermostat down, right. And also sent his daughter, Amy [00:03:00] Carter-

NICOLE HEMMER - HOST, PAST PRESENT: Like a grandpa.

NEIL YOUNG - HOST, PAST PRESENT: Yes. Then sent his daughter Amy Carter to public schools and was sort of criticized for that. And I think we should understand a lot of that plain living as tied to the sort of plain folk religion he came out of. That simple, ascetic, modest, self sacrificing sense of Christianity that he held consistent throughout his life. And I think again, what he was coming up against, what he was really colliding with was a religious right movement that understood religion and politics as a pathway to power, not as one of sort of self sacrificing Christian obligation and service to the nation.

And I think that that's really important to think about how his own sense of faith drove him, but also sort of drove him into the wall of this brand new political movement on the scene that became a tidal wave, to mix a couple of metaphors there.

NATALIA MEHLMAN PETRZELA - HOST, PAST PRESENT: Can I like pivot a little bit [00:04:00] in terms of precedent setting? I'm not sure, we should have like probably prepped this one. Maybe you two don't know off the top of your head. It is, how unique is it for a president to announce they're going into hospice? Because I feel like we're doing the whole obituary parade right now. And that is, I mean, I'm sure there's going to be much more to come when, you know, he passes, but it does seem, I don't remember doing this with other presidents.

NEIL YOUNG - HOST, PAST PRESENT: I thought George H. W. announced that he was in hospice at the end. I may be misremembering that.

NICOLE HEMMER - HOST, PAST PRESENT: I think that it is at least, I mean, clearly unusual. We don't have that many former presidents. You know, Ronald Reagan announced his struggles with Alzheimer and sort of retired from the world stage, which is a little different.

I mean, that same piece that Neil mentioned earlier about Jimmy Carter being you know, the greatest former president alive had, I think, as its subhead, he's teaching us how to die with dignity or something to that effect. And there is that sense that in his kind of closing act he is [00:05:00] representing that same kind of dignity and calm that he has been associated with for much of his post-presidential life.

From the Archives: Former President Jimmy Carter on Women's Rights, Religion and Power - The Brian Lehrer Show - Air Date 12-30-24

BRIAN LEHRER - HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: You and I have spoken about religion before in the context of your faith and your lifetime of teaching the Bible, so why point to religion now as a prime cause of what you call the most serious problem in the world?

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: Well, religion and violence are the two generic causes of the abuse of women and girls around the world. It's a misinterpretation of some of the scriptures that result in abuse of women and derogation of them in the eyes of men because they are convinced that women are inferior in the eyes of God. For religious people even that are Christians, for instance, we know that Jesus Christ, in His ministry and His words, all the recorded words, He never discriminated against women.

In fact, he exalted women far above what they had ever been previously in history. [00:06:00] Even in the New Testament, where St. Paul began to write to the early churches, he wrote to individual, sometimes little, tiny churches that had 20 or 30 members. Some of his verses can be interpreted either way. For the first three centuries, in the Christian church at least, women played an equal role as Paul points out in his 16th chapter of Acts. After that, the men who ran the church began to say, "Why don't we select other verses, which show that women are not qualified to be priests or deacons in the church?"

BRIAN LEHRER - HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: Can you give me an example of either of these verses on either side of this?

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: Well, yes. In fact, Paul said to one of his small churches that women should always never adorned themselves, that women should be silent in church. There's even a verse that says women shouldn't teach men. On the other hand, he said that in the eyes of God, men and women are equal, as are slaves and masters and are Jews and Gentiles. They are equal [00:07:00] in the eyes of God.

As I just mentioned in the 16th chapter that I mentioned, he lists about 25 people who were preeminent in leadership roles in the early church. About half of them are women by name. You can interpret it either way you want to if you have a preference. There are 36,000 verses, more or less, in the Old Testament, in the Hebrew text, and in the New Testament. You can interpret any way you want to.

BRIAN LEHRER - HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: In today's world, is this mostly a radical Islam problem? Certainly, we can find the conservative Christian and the history you were just describing, or the Orthodox Jewish or other religious practices that are sexist and cause harm to women and girls, but maybe there's nothing like the terrorist attacks and other military campaigns aimed at depriving girls in education and other things, Taliban, things going on in Nigeria, et cetera. A tiny minority of Muslims, we should say, involved in global terms, but still at a unique scale and intensity [00:08:00] compared to other religions?

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: Well, I've studied the Koran probably more than most people have in the United States that are not Muslims. When they were holding our hostages in Iran, I really made a dedicated effort to understand the Koran. I had experts come into the Oval Office and teach me about the nuances of it. It's very difficult to find a verse in the Koran that doesn't emphasize the equality of men and women in the eyes of Allah as interpreted by Muhammad.

Obviously, they are interpretations of that by the Taliban and others that deprive women of an equal right. Most of the problems that afflict women and girls are not from religious texts, but sometimes that's the basis for them as I've already mentioned. For instance, I'd say the worst unknown crime against women and girls is the murder little girls [00:09:00] by their parents. When a girl is born, they strangle her because they want a boy. Now, with the advent--

BRIAN LEHRER - HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: For economic reasons?

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: For economic reasons and also because some countries like China and India and others have put a limit on the total size of families. One is best, two is most. If they only have one child, they want to make sure that it's a boy. Also, they don't have Social Security like we do, so they want boys in the family so they can earn a living to support the parents when they're old age.

They look at a family in an area of poverty and they say, "We can only feed two children," so they strangle the rest of them. There's a new movie out called It's a Girl. It was premiered in November. There's a mother in India who very proudly says, in effect, she strangled eight daughters when they were born because she had to have a son. We know that in many areas, if there's only one opportunity to send a child to school, [00:10:00] they send a boy. If they have a limited amount of food, boys get first choice.

The other thing is that there are now about 160 million missing girls on Earth because either they baby at birth or the fetus in a selective abortion have been eliminated. This has resulted in China and India, in effect, in a very great shortage of women to be married to men or to satisfy the men's sexual desires in a brothel and so forth. This is another ancillary, terrible problem about it.

BRIAN LEHRER - HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: Am I right that you and Mrs. Carter left your Christian denomination of 70 years over women's issues?

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: Yes. In the year 2000, the Southern Baptist Convention deviated from its previous policy and ordained that women, being inferior, could not occupy the positions of pastor or deacon [00:11:00] or chaplain. They also even ordained it in some of the seminaries, which is the higher education level of Southern Baptist Church, that women couldn't even teach boys in a classroom.

BRIAN LEHRER - HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: It's not even just that they're not coming along as fast as some other denominations. It's that even in the post-feminist era, if you will, they went the other way.

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: They went the other way in the year 2000. My wife and I left the Southern Baptist Convention. We now belong to a Baptist church where I teach Bible lessons every Sunday, as a matter of fact. We've had women pastors and my wife is a deacon, the chairman of our board of deacons. The last time was a woman. We have a majority of deacons who are women. We treat men and women equally, which I believe that Jesus Christ always exemplified and promulgated as His policy.

BRIAN LEHRER - HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: Gee, if they don't want women teaching men and boys, maybe we can get more males into the teaching profession.

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: Well, you certainly can in the Southern Baptist Seminary.

BRIAN LEHRER - HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: I guess so [00:12:00] [chuckles]

Jimmy Carter’s “Decency & Humanity” Came with Deadly U.S. Policies in Latin America: Greg Grandin - Democracy Now! - Air Date 1-7-25

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Before we get into Panama, because it was under President Carter that Panama Canal was returned to Panama, the oversight of it, and before we talk about Salvador and Nicaragua, overall, President Carter’s legacy in Latin America?

GREG GRANDIN: Well, I think it was mixed, and it was confused. I mean, Carter was in many ways a transitional president that came to power having to deal with the combined disasters of both Vietnam and Watergate and rebuild trust and rebuild the kind of moral foundation on which the United States justified its exercise of power. And in many ways, Latin America was the place to do that.

And just to set the stage a little bit, set the scene, Carter comes to power, and he’s inaugurated in 1977. Pretty much all of South America is run by [00:13:00] anti-communist dictatorships that were installed or supported by the United States — the Nixon Doctrine, coups under Lyndon B. Johnson, coups under Kennedy. They brought to power one anti-communist dictatorship after another, largely in response to the Cuban Revolution, backing up even further. In Central America, there weren’t dictatorships, but there were insurgencies, revolutionary insurgencies, and anti-communist states fighting those insurgencies. And domestically, you had a very anti-imperialist Congress elected after Watergate and after Vietnam, that insisted that the United States start pulling back some of its support for dictatorships, for more of its unsavory allies. And Latin America seemed the place to do it.

And they did. They cut aid to Uruguay. They cut [00:14:00] aid to — they limited aid to Chile. They cut aid to Brazil, all the military to Argentina. And, of course, that became a kind of shining example of what the United States should be in terms of its foreign policy. The reality was actually more complicated. It was also the place where the United States started putting conditionalities on military aid. And obviously, we see that under Gaza, how that’s played out, but that the United States would — you know, there would be certain markers or certain checkmarks that countries had to meet in terms of human rights monitoring before military aid was released. In many ways, it was more symbolic than real. In a country like Guatemala, for instance, where the United States did cut off military aid, it didn’t cut off military aid that was already in the pipeline, so that continued to flow. Now, in Central America, where you had insurgencies, these were [00:15:00] kind of like a stress test for this new foreign policy, this new moralism that Jimmy Carter represented. And he didn’t at first cut aid off to Nicaragua, and he didn’t cut off aid to El Salvador.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Meaning, in Nicaragua, to Somoza.

GREG GRANDIN: To Somoza or to the junta in El Salvador.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Now, let’s talk about El Salvador —

GREG GRANDIN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: — because you have Archbishop Óscar Romero, who has been canonized a saint by the Vatican, who was assassinated on March 24th, 1980. He appealed to President Carter, weeks before his assassination, to stop the flow of aid.

GREG GRANDIN: Directly, in a very impassioned letter that was — I teach that letter. And Carter didn’t respond. He left it to Cyrus Vance to respond. He didn’t respond. And they didn’t cut off aid. And even prior to that — Cyrus Vance was Carter’s secretary of state. [00:16:00] Brzeziński, Zbigniew Brzeziński, was his national security adviser. And in many ways, you can think of them as two sides. Like, Vance was considered more dovish, and Brzeziński more hawkish — a little more complicated than that. But Brzeziński was complaining to the Vatican about Óscar Romero, that he had been moved too far to the left. This was before the letter. So, you see that, you know, it’s not just Jimmy Carter; it’s the administration he presides over. It’s much more —

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And he — when Óscar Romero was giving his homily, that was broadcast throughout El Salvador, when he was gunned down, he was appealing to the soldiers of El Salvador, to the paramilitaries. He said, “I beseech you, I urge you, I plead” —

GREG GRANDIN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: — “with you to put down your arms.”

GREG GRANDIN: Yeah. Actually, that was a day before he was assassinated. He was assassinated in a smaller church. It was a smaller Mass in a smaller parish in San Salvador. He was shot through the heart. But yes —

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: [00:17:00] By? By?

GREG GRANDIN: By a death squad that was trained by the United States and led by Roberto D’Aubuisson.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Who would later become president.

GREG GRANDIN: He would later become — he would later become the head of the ARENA party. I don’t believe he was president, but, no, he became the head of the party that ruled El Salvador, the ARENA party. But he became a very influential politician, Roberto D’Aubuisson.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Right. He was a member of the Legislative Assembly.

GREG GRANDIN: Yeah, yeah. And he was a favorite of the far right. So, Jimmy Carter, in many ways, was a foil for the rising right in the United States, and his policies in Latin America kind of captured the contradictions — and I would use the word “contradiction” rather than “confusion” — of Carter’s foreign policy. You know, he came to power — he came to power promising to end the United States’s inordinate fear of communism. He gave a speech in Notre Dame that was considered a kind of a new kind of doctrine, that the United States [00:18:00] was moving away from both the ideological excess and the support for dictatorships that led to wars like Vietnam or coups in Chile.

But he fairly — pretty quickly, events got ahead of him, in many ways. In Central America, the rise of the Sandinistas and insurgencies led to contradictory policies. In El Salvador, he, for instance, continued supporting the military regime and its death squads. In Nicaragua, he cut off economic aid, but he continued military aid as he tried to kind of guide, you know, force Somoza out and lead to more democratic elections when the Sandinistas had the momentum. There was the Iranian Revolution in [00:19:00] the Persian Gulf, which led to the Carter Doctrine, which was written by Brzeziński and basically asserted that the United States would respond with military force to anything that they perceived as a threat to U.S. interests.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: I want to play a clip of President Carter’s commencement speech at the University of Notre Dame in 1977.

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: Democracy’s great recent success in India, Portugal, Spain, Greece show that our confidence in this system is not misplaced. Being confident of our own future, we are now free of that inordinate fear of communism, which once led us to embrace any dictator who joined us in that fear.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: So, that was President Carter. The significance of what he was saying there when it relates to, for example, Latin America?

GREG GRANDIN: Well, that he was saying that he was going to deal with Third [00:20:00] World nationalism on its own terms, not as just a front for geopolitical Cold War politics, meaning the Soviet Union. But that gives way very quickly. I mean, we only have a few minutes, but we have to say that it was under Carter that the CIA began its operation in Afghanistan, began supporting the mujahideen. It was the Carter administration in July 1979, urged by Brzeziński to begin providing nonlethal aid to what becomes the mujahideen. All of these things led to what — the end of détente and the pulling of the Soviet Union deeper into Afghanistan and the weaponization of Islam as a geopolitical tool in the United States, that we’re still living with the consequences today. And for all of his decency and humanity, especially compared to orgastic — the wealth and [00:21:00] the clown circus that we’re living under now, we have to kind of look at how Carter — some of the more unfortunate legacies of Carter’s administration.

The Faith of Jimmy Carter - Facepalm America - Air Date 4-12-23

RANDALL BALMER: I think, there's another story that has to be woven into this that is not so pretty and that is when he ran for governor and second time in 1970, ultimately successfully. Toward the end of that campaign he was really quite afraid that he would lose the Democratic nomination. And to his shame, and he is ashamed of it, he courted the segregationist vote late in that campaign. And I'm not trying to give him a pass on that by no means whatsoever, but it does show humanity and human frailty, it seems to me. And I think the other thing that we have to take away from that, is the fact that when he was inaugurated as governor of [00:22:00] Georgia in January 12th, 1971, he famously said that the time for racial segregation is over. And part of that, I'm sure, was really doing penance for that campaign, which he was not proud of.

But also, again, I think you have to judge him by his actions, because he did make good on that pledge to try to put racial segregation behind him and behind his state. Through several acts of substantive policy changes that he inaugurated as governor, but also symbolically. He hung three, the portraits of three African Americans in the state house in Georgia during his governorship. And that's including Martin Luther King Jr. And that I think speaks to his sincerity.

BEOWULF ROCHLEN - HOST, FACEPALM AMERICA: What influence did his faith have on [00:23:00] his evolving racial beliefs, especially at that time?

RANDALL BALMER: Well, I think it was profound. That said, he often talked about the fact that his playmates growing up in Archery, Georgia, which is three miles down the road from Plains, Georgia, Archery, Georgia is, a nothing town really it's really a farm community. And not very large at that. But his playmates were African Americans. So he grew up really racially blind in many ways.

And he often talks about the day that he and his his two buddies were playing, they were both in their early teens at that point, and they were going through one of the garden gates there on the farm, and all of a sudden, they opened the gate for him and deferred to him to go through the gate 1st, and he thought at 1st, it was a prank that they were going to trip him or something. And he realized later [00:24:00] that this was a transitional moment that is when they were moving away from the innocence of childhood, in terms of racial matters, to adulthood when they had to observe the protocols of the South. So, in many ways, he was colorblind.

I think it's fair to say now I have to again mention the 1970 campaign as an exception. I do think it is an exception. But it's also true that his faith is certainly informed not only his racial views, but his other policies as well.

BEOWULF ROCHLEN - HOST, FACEPALM AMERICA: How did it inform his politics as governor, as president, and how was he considered also within the community of Christian evangelicals, and particularly Southern Baptists, as a Christian? Was he thought of as being too progressive during this time?

RANDALL BALMER: Yeah, to some degree. Well, you asked a complex [00:25:00] questions,

BEOWULF ROCHLEN - HOST, FACEPALM AMERICA: Feel free to take the time. I don't want to, I don't want to,

RANDALL BALMER: He was very interested in prison reform, noting that the overwhelming majority of the prison population in Georgia, as it is for the nation, of course, was people of color. And so he sought to make their situation better.

He also appointed a lot of people of color to state offices. And as president, he appointed more women and more people of color than all of his predecessors combined. So that would be one measure of how his faith informed his policies. In terms of his presidency, he recognized early on that if the United States was to have any meaningful relationship with third world countries, in particular, Latin America, that we needed to abandon our colonial attitudes.

And so very early in his presidency, he pushed very hard, and it [00:26:00] cost him dearly politically. But he pushed hard to revise and have the Panama Canal treaties ratified. And again, I think history looking back on it, the consensus is that he did the right thing. But it did cost him dearly politically. He also sought to move American foreign policy away from the reflexive Cold War dualism that had defined the US policy since at least World War II and toward a common, a concern for human rights and his policies on human rights, even though it angered a lot of our allies. His policies on human rights really did succeed in freeing a good number of political prisoners. It's hard to put a precise number on it, but I think it's safe to say thousands of political prisoners were freed because of his policies.

I mentioned his appointment of women and people of color. [00:27:00] But environmentalists also consider Jimmy Carter to be the best environmental president ever, because of his concern for the natural order, for the created order, God's created order.

BEOWULF ROCHLEN - HOST, FACEPALM AMERICA: And that's where it came from for him, presumably.

RANDALL BALMER: I think it did. Absolutely.

BEOWULF ROCHLEN - HOST, FACEPALM AMERICA: In a sense of stewardship, really.

RANDALL BALMER: Absolutely. I don't think there was really anything in terms of his policies that wasn't informed some level by his faith. His faith was very important to him. And, just to parenthetically, that's the reason I wrote Redeemer, my biography of Jimmy Carter, because I wanted to take his faith seriously. Because he took his faith seriously. And I think that's important to understand in any assessment of Jimmy Carter.

651: The Jimmy Carter Cudgel & Preparing for Mass Deportations with Gabriel Salguero - Holy Post - Air Date 1-8-25

PHIL VISCHER - HOST, HOLY POST: I said, Mr. Rogers, Donald Trump, which one is more like Jesus. If that is a controversial thing to [00:28:00] say, I need to have a talk with you offline.

ESAU MCCAULLEY: It's not a controversial thing to say. It's an easy thing to say. That's different. There's a difference. It's not controversial. It's an easy, it's easy...

PHIL VISCHER - HOST, HOLY POST: yeah. I didn't have any trouble saying it. Yeah. It's not.

SKYE JETHANI - HOST, HOLY POST: I don't think. First of all, I'm not making any assessment of Jimmy Carter's policies and whether they were Christlike or not. I'm not. I'm talking about the man. Yeah. And I think his humility is a reflection, it's a Christian value that I think we are called to emulate and I don't think that value went over well with most Americans and especially when there were challenges that came along like the Iranian Hostage Crisis and inflation and OPEC and some of the other things he had to deal with during his presidency. His humility did not go over well when he goes to address the nation and starts confessing failures and mistakes that he made. It's not great.

And I think at least in my experience in in the ministry subculture that I've been a part of, you hear people say all the time, Oh, I want a [00:29:00] pastor who's like Jesus. And I want a ministry leader who's like Jesus. Or even I want a president who's like Jesus. And I think when you really dig down, most people don't. They say that because it's what they're supposed to say, but when you really present them some of those qualities that mark Jesus's life, it's not what most Americans want from their institutional, political, or even religious leaders. They want people who are strong, who are confident, who are brilliant communicators, who are going to stick it to their enemies, who are going to be aspirational in their leadership because they exhibit the kinds of values that people want for themselves.

And in a lot of American Christian subculture, the values we want for ourselves are not the humility and suffering and self sacrifice that epitomized the good shepherd that we claim to follow.

PHIL VISCHER - HOST, HOLY POST: On that we agree.

ESAU MCCAULLEY: We'll agree. I mean, we agree.

PHIL VISCHER - HOST, HOLY POST: Okay. Okay. So what can we learn from the question? One is, what can we learn from Jimmy Carter [00:30:00] being really humble but also rather stubborn? He was extremely stubborn. It's not a good recipe for winning a second term as president of the United States. But what can we learn from the way the media treats Jimmy Carter? Esau, what do you say? Scott, what do you say?

ESAU MCCAULLEY: I mean, I think that we can take a lot from Jimmy Carter's, the way that he treated his wife, from what I can tell from afar, from the fact that he was faithfully married to his wife for his entire life. As far as I know there's no scandals attached to him there. I think the fact that he lived out his Christian faith by service in his local church. I think that's important. I think that you can see that he also lived out his faith and how he cared practically for other people. And I think all of those things are laudatory, and I think that that's a good example for anybody to follow.

If you happen to be married, treat your [00:31:00] spouse well and remain faithful to them. Don't cheat on them. Serve in your local church and practically express your faith by the way that you treat those people who don't have the resources to pay you back. I think those are things that you can learn from Jimmy Carter.

SKYE JETHANI - HOST, HOLY POST: Yeah, I agree. And I would summarize it this way. I think Jimmy Carter was an exceptional humanitarian and a somewhat crummy politician. And those are actually two compliments, because I think to be a really good, shrewd politician is a hard thing. It is a calling for some people, but it does require a willingness to compromise on some principles that I think Christians should find it really hard to compromise on. And he didn't. And that made him a poor politician at times.

PHIL VISCHER - HOST, HOLY POST: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Okay. Okay, well, there you go. I guess we're done. I guess we... but is it okay, Esau, that [00:32:00] the world is attracted to humanitarian Christians and ascribes their humanitarian work to their Christian faith without getting into doctrine?

ESAU MCCAULLEY: No, I get it. I get it. No that's not a bad thing. People should see, they would know you by how you treat other people, as like a common Christian idea. So, I don't think it's bad that someone says these Christians are people who care about the poor and who do things for the poor. I just feel like it's very easy for us to say, look at all the good things that Jimmy Carter did. Look at how Jimmy Carter embodied Jesus. Look at how these other people don't embody Jesus. And these are people who we didn't like before Jimmy Carter died. And so Jimmy Carter's death becomes an occasion for us to duck on the people who we already don't like. And I don't find that the most unique take, which is what the media did... in other words, it's not like Jimmy Carter's death was freshly revelatory [00:33:00] for certain elements of the Christian right. And so I'm not saying that we shouldn't praise Jimmy Carter. I'm saying that there is an obsession with here are the things that a certain segment of White evangelicalism has done wrong. And every single thing that exists is an example of that phenomenon. And I'm just tired of saying it. I'm tired of saying it. I've said it a thousand times. And so it may feel like I'm just like, afraid to praise Jimmy Carter, but it's like, yeah, I could praise Jimmy Carter and use Jimmy Carter's life as a cudgel for people who I might disagree with politically. And I'm trying to say in 2025, I'm going to put that cudgel down and try to have a better conversation.

When Carter called out America - Today, Explained - Air Date 12-30-24

SEAN RAMESWARAM - HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: President Carter called out what many think of as a central pillar. of American life: Cap-i-tal-ism.

KEVIN MATTSON: Consumerism and the want of things was creating an unsustainable world. And the oil crisis was making that clear to people and staring them in the face.

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about [00:34:00] the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation. The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.

KEVIN MATTSON: How many times have we heard a president in the past take on the selfishness of consumerism and say it's a significant problem for Americans? And the fact that he called individualism into question was, again, what made the speech exceptional. You usually don't use that line, you know, because Americans like to think of themselves as individuals. And here he was, you know, attacking that and showing his shortcomings. So I think that that's probably back to why I get more and more entranced in the content of the speech. I started wanting to kind of dig down deeper because I think I had never seen a president in the United States call into question the consumerist lifestyle that Americans are known for.

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: Why have we not been able to get together as a nation [00:35:00] to resolve our serious energy problem? It's clear that the true problems of our nation are much deeper, deeper than gasoline lines or energy shortages, deeper even than inflation or recession. And I realize more than ever that, as president, I need your help.

KEVIN MATTSON: It's July 15th, 1979. The thing that Carter just stated is pointing to something that's really disturbing to a lot of Americans, which are these long gas lines that are forming at gas stations.

ARCHIVE NEWS CLIPS: Anger and bewilderment are growing as more and more Americans cope with gasoline lines and empty pumps. For millions of Americans, this may be the worst weekend they've ever faced for finding gasoline to give them the automobile freedom they take as their due.

KEVIN MATTSON: And what happens on these gas lines, people are getting in fistfights, there's a woman who [00:36:00] puts these pillows up under her dress to make it look like she's pregnant so she could cut into the line and say, I need gas for me and my unborn child. And then these pillows fall out, people start to throw things at her. I mean, it's just total chaos.

ARCHIVE NEWS CLIPS: Gasoline shortages are spreading across the country. Odd even service, gasoline lines, and closed gas stations are becoming increasingly common.

KEVIN MATTSON: One of the things that they would do at these gas lines is that the gas attendant would take a poster and say, "Last Car" and put it on the window, where if they went past that, they would run out of gas and people would jump into the cars, take the signs, put them back 25 spaces so that other people could get gas. And it was kind of like individualism coming to the fore in a really ugly way. I mean, the threats of violence, the actual violence, people just looking for their self interest. I think that kind of was one of the key things that made Jimmy Carter really worry about individualism and consumerism is that it could lead to such awful fights that were being engaged in by normal ordinary Americans. That's I [00:37:00] think the foremost issue that's on Carter's mind that's happening in the streets of the country at this time.

ARCHIVE NEWS CLIPS: You tell that goddamn governor he's gonna police this goddamn gasoline situation. I will not take the blame for this thing. I will not take the crap and the harassment from these customers. Now let him police it or stop selling gas.

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: I will soon submit legislation to Congress calling for the creation of this nation's first solar bank which will help us achieve the crucial goal of 20 percent of our energy coming from solar power by the year 2000.

KEVIN MATTSON: He did install solar panels on the White House. And I think it was kind of a practical thing. I mean, it would reduce energy costs, obviously, and reliance upon foreign oil. It reminds me also of an early episode in Jimmy Carter's presidency, and he's fairly famous for this, where he sits with a cardigan sweater with a fireplace [00:38:00] next to him. And he basically says, turn down the thermostats because we're wasting energy.

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: All of us must learn to waste less energy. Simply by keeping our thermostats, for instance, at 65 degrees in the daytime and 55 degrees at night, we could save half the current shortage of natural gas.

KEVIN MATTSON: It symbolized both, I'm the president of the United States, but I'm going to do something. He's doing stuff concretely in his own behavior. I mean, I can't read how Americans would respond to that, but I think they would think at least he's not a hypocrite. He's actually putting his money where his mouth is. And there's something to that, that I think makes Jimmy Carter attractive as we look back upon both him and what's followed in his wake.

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: This is not a message of happiness or reassurance. But it is the truth, and it is a warning. These changes did not happen [00:39:00] overnight. They've come upon us gradually over the last generation, years that were filled with shocks and tragedy. We were sure that ours was a nation of the ballot, not the bullet, until the murders of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. We were taught that our armies were always invincible, and our causes were always just, only to suffer the agony of Vietnam. We respected the presidency as a place of honor until the shock of Watergate.

KEVIN MATTSON: The distrust that he's, I think, talking about there amongst the general American public is really strong. And he's basically saying, we made mistakes. I made mistakes. We're [00:40:00] all making mistakes, which again shows the kind of radical nature of this speech is that he's sharing the blame but he's also saying that things like Watergate and Vietnam, you can't just slough them off They are things that leave a huge imprint on American political culture. So I think that there's a kind of growing distrust he's trying to address and trying to push back on.

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not [00:41:00] satisfy our longing for meaning.

KEVIN MATTSON: He's got this mix of touting traditional values in contrast with the consumer culture that dominates at this time. To take that on, to put that front and center, saying essentially, you know, Let's stop paying attention to all the scenes in the gas lines. Let's get beyond that sort of stuff. And realize that there's something much deeper that's troubling, and that is a reliance upon consumer goods and trying to seek our own happiness out of all the things that we want to get.

Keep in mind that Jimmy Carter was notorious for teaching Sunday school. He has a kind of minister's tone in some of these passages. But I don't think that he's just simply blaming or scolding the American people, because he prefaces everything with pointing out to his own faults. Usually people who are scolding don't say, I'm also a part of the problem.

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: We can manage the short term shortages more effectively, and we will. But there are no short term solutions to our long range problems. [00:42:00] There is simply no way to avoid sacrifice.

KEVIN MATTSON: We're going to have to sacrifice. I think that's the bottom line is what Carter is saying. He's calling people back to sacrifice and he's saying, you know, there are things we can do in our day to day lives. We can turn down the thermostat. We can try not to drive our cars everywhere we go. I think that he sees a way to get back to a better place, but it's going to take sacrifices. It's going to take people doing something in their ordinary lives.

And that's, again, a rarity. I think that, you know, where do we see our government actually interacting with ordinary citizens to actually push through a policy that includes, at least in part, sacrifice and living within one's means.

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: I do not promise you that this struggle for freedom will be easy. I do not promise a quick way out of our nation's problems. When the truth is that the only way out is an all out effort. [00:43:00] What I do promise you is that I will lead our fight and I will enforce fairness in our struggle. And I will ensure honesty. And above all, I will act.

KEVIN MATTSON: You can really hear the war language there, you know: mobilize, I'll be your leader, but we have to sacrifice and pay attention to one another. What he wants to aim for is to build a kind of simpler society, maybe one where consumption wasn't so widespread and taking things over. But also at the same time, it's got to push back against our over reliance upon foreign sources of oil.

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: We know the strength of America. We are strong. We can regain our unity. We can regain our confidence. We are the heirs of generations who survived threats much more powerful and awesome than those that challenge us now.[00:44:00]

SEAN RAMESWARAM - HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: He doesn't make it seem like that tall an order, though he's probably throwing out ideas that are very foreign to the American people.

KEVIN MATTSON: I think that that has to just be called a contradiction. I mean, the speech opens up with such a long treatment of all the problems that the country faced historically. To turn it around on the kind of optimistic note, if anything, that's the part in the speech that every time I read it, I'm like, eh, you know, you've set out a pretty difficult course to chart and to just kind of slough it off and say, well, we have the competence, we can do it. We've done it before. I think that's the part of the speech, at least for myself, that rings slightly hollow.

Note from the Editor on the supposed desire for truth

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips starting with Past Present, looking at the stark differences between Carter's presidency and those that came before and after. The Brian Lehrer Show pulled an interview with Carter from their archives discussing gender equality. Democracy Now! discussed Carter's foreign policy with particular focus on Latin America. Facepalm America looked into Carter's complicated [00:45:00] history on race. Holy Post analyzed Carter's faith and why it didn't help him when the Christian vote. And Today Explained dove into the legacy of Carter's attempt to address the oil crisis through unity and collective sacrifice. And those were just the top takes.

There's a lot more in the deeper dive section. But first, a reminder that this show is produced with the support of our members who get access to bonus episodes and enjoy all of our shows without ads. To support all of our work and have those bonus episodes delivered seamlessly to the new members only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show bestoftheleft.com/support. There's a link in the show notes, through our Patreon page or from right inside the apple podcast app. And as always if regular membership isn't in the cards for you, shoot me an email requesting any financial hardship membership, because we don't let a lack of funds stand in the way of hearing more information.

We've been trying something new and offering you the opportunity to submit your comments and questions on upcoming topics. It takes a little time for us to do all the research and prep shows, so I can give you [00:46:00] a heads up on what's coming. So you can be part of the conversation as it happens. Next up, we're working on the concept of de-alignment of labor and the left, as well as the self-styled realignment of so-called populist conservatives happening on the right. And then following that we'll be tackling the LA fires and the broader interplay between fire and water in the age of climate change. So get your comments and questions in now for those topics, you can leave a voicemail or send us a text at (202) 999-3991. Or simply email me to [email protected].

Now as for today's topic, I have some thoughts on the upsides and downsides of telling the truth. As we're hearing in the show today, Jimmy Carter was famous for promising to be straight with the American people. Up to and including telling them that wearing sweaters would help during the energy crisis. A couple of months ago, we had a discussion here on the members show, about this idea from a journalist Claude Cockburn. He died in the eighties. [00:47:00] He argued that we shouldn't bother speaking truth to power as is so often said, because he argued. The rulers of the earth, don't generally care about truth, which I think, you know, fair enough. It's more effective, he argued, to speak truth to the masses. So that they have a fighting chance in their struggle against the powerful. It's a nice idea. I like it. It rings true, et cetera. The only problem is that people really hate being told the truth. They think they like it. They think they want it. But the case studies of Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump tell the different story, I think.

Carter went out of his way to try to always tell the truth. And he was booted from office at the first chance. Trump has almost certainly broken the record for the most lies told by any American politician. And his supporters, many of whom know he's lying, are happy to follow him to the end of the earth. Perhaps literally. Trump's reputation among the MAGA crowd is that he tells it straight. Which [00:48:00] is definitely not true. Whereas Jimmy Carter was the actual president who told it straight.

The biggest difference that I can see, I mean besides Trump's lies and you got that giant disparity, is the presence of an enemy. A guilty party, those responsible for the bad things I'm telling you about. Carter would tell you straight about problems, but he didn't conjure a scapegoat the way Trump does. So people think they want the truth, but in reality, they want someone to blame. And they hope that that blame is true. You know, they want it to be real. But they really, much more, just want someone to blame.

So I got thinking about all this and wondered, well, okay, so what's my conclusion about this. And what came to mind was the old saying "In a democracy, people get the leaders they deserve." The sort of thing that people on the left generally say when the country elects politicians, we don't like, right? It's like, well, yeah, maybe this is what we [00:49:00] deserve. We're not the best. But then I wondered, well, wait, who said that? You know, I just had never looked it up before. So I looked it up and it's a French guy from the early 1800s, Joseph de Maistre said that back in 1811, according to Wiki Quote. But then I was just looking at the very next quote on that same Wiki Quote page by the same guy. And I couldn't believe the relevance to this topic. So maybe, maybe this is my takeaway point.

Keep Jimmy Carter in mind as I read this quote from the early 1800s: Joseph de Maistre

says, quote, "I don't know what the life of a rascal is like since I've never been one, but that of an honest man is abominable. How few men are there who's passage on this stupid planet has been marked by really good and useful acts. I prostrate myself before the one of which one can say 'he went about doing good.' The one who [00:50:00] had been able to instruct, console, and relieve his fellows, the one who made great sacrifices for charity, these heroes of silent charity who hide themselves and expect nothing in this world. But what is the ordinary man? And how many are there in a thousand who can ask themselves without terror, 'What have I done in this world? In what way have I advanced to the common good and what will remain of me? Good or evil?'"

SECTION A: HISTORICAL CONTEXT

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now we'll continue to dive deeper on four topics. Next up Section A- Historical Context, followed by Section B- Foreign Policy, Section C- Christian Nationalism, and Section D- Republican Rat Fucking.

Episode 364: Jimmy Carter Part 2 - Past Present - Air Date 2-28-23

NEIL YOUNG - HOST, PAST PRESENT: I think he's a really seminal figure in this history and a lot of sort of unexpected ways. When he runs for president in 1976, he tells reporters that he's an evangelical and they don't know what that is. [00:51:00] And there's really, there's literally an account of New York Times reporters like getting out their dictionary and looking up the word evangelical to figure out what he's even talking about. Now that is inconceivable for us from the vantage point of 2023. But he was on the cusp of history that was literally unfolding in real time.

And he wasn't saying that for some sort of political gain. He wasn't inserting religion into politics as much as he was just speaking about himself authentically as a person of deep faith, who was introducing himself to the nation at a time when, you really had to do that as a presidential candidate. It wasn't the same sort of media space. And also his time in office coincided with the rise of the religious right and the politicization of religion in American public life. And a good bit of that, I've argued in pieces I've written and in my book, was a response to him because he wasn't the type of Christian in American politics that these newly energized, white [00:52:00] evangelical conservatives were expecting someone like him to be.

NICOLE HEMMER - HOST, PAST PRESENT: I don't remember if Carter won the white evangelical vote in '76, or if he split it with Ford. But I do remember that there was a big "exit stage right" for many of the evangelicals who supported him in '76 when it came to the election in 1980. And I think that's worth just throwing out there because we so closely associate white evangelicalism with conservatism. But Jimmy Carter was this political presence on the national stage.

He was somebody who he wasn't conservative necessarily, although I think that he was the more conservative candidate in the democratic primaries in 1976, but he also just represented something different. Kennedy and Johnson and Nixon and Ford, they had all been creatures of Congress, and they were very much part of Washington, DC.

And Jimmy Carter represented the rise of the Southern or the Sun Belt [00:53:00] Governor as president. So he was a transitional figure. And that way, he represents this moment of real fluidity in the coalitions for both parties. And I think that the white evangelicals are just one place where you're seeing that play out. You're seeing it play out in white, blue collar workers and union members. You're seeing it play out among Catholics. There's just this sort of mushiness to the electorate in this moment, and you're not sure where it's going to go.

And I think one of the things that also sticks out to me about him is, Jimmy Carter was the only Democratic president between the time that Lyndon Johnson left office and Bill Clinton came into office. And so there, it strikes me that there has to be something kind of special about him to break through those years of landslide Republican victories. I know that he's largely remembered for the fact that he lost in 1980, but the fact that he won in 1976. That seems pretty impressive as well.

NATALIA MEHLMAN PETRZELA - HOST, PAST PRESENT: What do you make of his [00:54:00] southerness? I'm curious, like how that plays in and you two both with deeper southern roots than I have, are probably more fit. Nikki, I know you're a transplant, but I'm giving you that. But I feel like that has something to do with this, right? This is an era when we talk about like the sun beltification of America.

We often associate that almost entirely with the reddening of America and with conservatism, but doesn't his unique status as having been a Democrat who won in that time period, in the time that you sketched out, Nikki. Does that have something to do with his southerness and the palatability of a southern liberal at that in that period? What do you think?

NICOLE HEMMER - HOST, PAST PRESENT: I mean, it absolutely does. Who are the two democratic presidents between Johnson and Obama? It's Carter and Bill Clinton. I think Neil can speak to this a little bit more as a native southerner. But there's also, at least from the political sense, he is an outsider. He is somebody who's not of Washington, DC. He's from elsewhere. He's seen more as a populist. Somebody who's outside of the establishment. He's [00:55:00] a farmer and a Sunday school teacher. And so he brings all of that to the table. As well as the way that his southerness, it takes the edges off of his liberalism.

NEIL YOUNG - HOST, PAST PRESENT: Just piggybacking on to what you had said a few minutes ago, Nikki, about the fluidity of this sort of coalitional politics and how it's shifting really in these years, it's also important to remember that a lot of Southerners are starting to split their ticket in this time. And they're starting to show up more as Republican voters on the presidential level, but really into the nineties Southerners are voting for Democrats at the local and state level, and a lot of them are keeping their registration as Democrats because that's where the more important elections are at the state and local levels throughout the South. Even, into the 1990s.

And so Carter winning the presidency in 1976 with a good chunk of southern states supporting him isn't all that remarkable. It actually ties it back to a longer history of the Democratic party in the South. Now he was a bit of a different candidate in some ways and in other ways not so [00:56:00] much. When he ran for governor in the early 1970s, there were some really unfortunate things, or really he spoke in coded language to appeal to voters in order to win that election. Although as governor, he did push Georgia in a civil rights direction. And certainly as a presidential candidate he was more clearly aligned with a civil rights tradition of the Democratic Party.

But there's a sort of fluidity within him as well, because there's a sort of political transformation that he's undergoing. that in some ways, butts up against the South's transformation and other ways still aligns with it.

NICOLE HEMMER - HOST, PAST PRESENT: I'm glad you brought up sort of the more complicated history around Carter when it comes to race and segregation and the South.

Because I do think that there is a tendency, particularly among Democrats who I think many have a soft spot for Carter to maybe not paint the fullest picture of him. In part because, his dedication to things like human rights, his [00:57:00] work for Habitat for Humanity, his work for peace at the Carter Center, and all of these other ways, the ways that he doesn't cash in on his post presidential sort of potential earnings, because he's not interested, as future presidents would be, in making millions of dollars because he once was president. I think all of those things put a kind of rosy glow around Carter. And in some ways, maybe keep us from fully reckoning with Carter as an ambitious political character, right? Because morality seems so central to his politics. I don't think we often allow him to be a politician in our memory of him.

NATALIA MEHLMAN PETRZELA - HOST, PAST PRESENT: Well, it's really worth reading this essay by Kai Bird, his biographer, who really in some ways, I think props up the kind of mythology, not falsehood, but the sort of image of Carter that you're talking about is this kind of humble guy who moved back to Georgia and didn't pursue all these, big money speaking [00:58:00] engagements. On the other hand, he talks about him as like this hard nosed politician. One on the issue of racial equality that, growing up as a Southerner, yes, he had this idealism of the urgency of solving racism and ending racial discrimination, but he also had a very pragmatic view about what it would take to get that done.

And then also at, even in his nineties, that he was like calling for 7 a. m. meetings and giving only 45 minutes or 50 minutes to his biographer to talk about his time at the White House and had a very sort of pointed way of dealing with people. Some people called him intimidating, even kind of mean. And so I do think all of that does absolutely push back on this sort of like avuncular, like, friendly, modest, like Southern grandpa image that you know, and nice Southern grandpa, not like old racist Southern grandpa image that I think some people perhaps rely upon a little too readily, especially at this point in his life. When he is, we, I don't even know if we said it, he's the longest [00:59:00] living president ever, right? He's been the longest time out of office than as any president, more than any president. And also he's the oldest.

NICOLE HEMMER - HOST, PAST PRESENT: Yeah. I think George H. W. Bush had also turned 94, but Carter is definitely the oldest ex president we've ever had.

Remembering the extraordinary life of former President Jimmy Carter - PBS NewsHour - Air Date 12-29-24

JUDY WOODRUFF - HOST, PBS NEWSHOUR: On the domestic front, the President grappled with an economy beset by spiking inflation and interest rates and an energy crisis.

Just two weeks into his tenure, a cardigan clad Carter urged Americans to conserve during a televised fireside chat.

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: All of us must learn to waste less energy.

WOMAN: Why didn't they come out and tell us there was no gas?

JUDY WOODRUFF - HOST, PBS NEWSHOUR: But by the summer of '79, the public's patience was wearing thin.

WOMAN: I've been here since 4:30 this morning. It's ridiculous waiting on line here.

MAN: I'm in the line two hours in, I can't get gas. This is baloney. Carter doesn't get my vote next year.

JUDY WOODRUFF - HOST, PBS NEWSHOUR: With his [01:00:00] popularity plunging, President Carter set out to turn the country's mood.

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: So I want to speak to you first tonight about a subject even more serious than energy or inflation. I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy. The threat is nearly invisible. In ordinary ways, it is a crisis of confidence.

JUDY WOODRUFF - HOST, PBS NEWSHOUR: He never actually used the term, but it came to be known as the malaise speech. And it brought new ridicule. Then, in November of that year, half a world away, the great crisis of the Carter presidency began. The capture of 66 Americans in Iran, most of them at the U.S. embassy, all with the tacit backing of that country's new supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.[01:01:00]

In April 1980, the President authorized an ill-fated military operation to try to free the hostages. But the mission ran into mechanical troubles and one helicopter crashed, killing five U.S. airmen and three U.S. Marines.

It was the Iran crisis and the nation's deep economic trouble that haunted the Carter reelection bid. Senator Ted Kennedy mounted a primary challenge that lasted until that summer's Democratic convention.

Meanwhile, Republicans coalesced around former California Governor Ronald Reagan.

MAN: Good morning. How are you?

Judy Woodruff [voice-over]:

And Illinois Congressman John Anderson. And also ran in the GOP primaries, turned independent for the general election.

JOHN ANDERSON: Give me your help. Give me your votes on the 4th of November.

JUDY WOODRUFF - HOST, PBS NEWSHOUR: For weeks, the Carter campaign declined to have the President debate both Reagan and Anderson [01:02:00] on the same stage.

JOHN ANDERSON: The man who should be here tonight to respond to those charges chose not to attend.

JUDY WOODRUFF - HOST, PBS NEWSHOUR: But finally, just a week before the election, Mr. Carter did square off with Reagan, but found himself outmatched.

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: Now we have an opportunity to move toward national health insurance. Governor Reagan, again, typically is against such a proposal.

MAN: Governor.

PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: There you go again.

JUDY WOODRUFF - HOST, PBS NEWSHOUR: Reagan used the debate to disarm depictions of himself as an extremist and thus ease voters' fears. He closed with a simple question that summed up his indictment of the Carter presidency.

PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: And it might be well if you would ask yourself. Are you better off than you were four years ago?

Judy Woodruff [voice-over]:

Reagan would later call it a critical moment in the campaign. But in President Carter's eyes —

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: The major factor in the election had nothing to do with that debate. It was the fact [01:03:00] that went through election day, which was the exact one year anniversary of the hostages being taken in Iran.

JUDY WOODRUFF - HOST, PBS NEWSHOUR: By then, the Iranians had freed 14 of the original 66 American hostages. The other 52 remained captive and Iran refused to budge.

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: The parliament decided under Khomeini's pressure that they would not release the hostages. And this devastating negative news about hostages swept the country. But on election day, I've always been convinced that this was a major factor.

JUDY WOODRUFF - HOST, PBS NEWSHOUR: Whatever the reason, President Carter was trounced that night. And at 9.50 p.m., more than an hour before polls closed on the west coast, he conceded.

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: I promised you four years ago that I would never lie to you. So I can't stand here tonight and say it doesn't hurt.[01:04:00]

JUDY WOODRUFF - HOST, PBS NEWSHOUR: He spent much of his remaining time in office trying to free the Americans held in Tehran while he still could.

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: At 10 o'clock on inauguration morning, all the hostages were in an airplane ready to take off. And Khomeini held them until five minutes after I was no longer present. Then they took off. But that was one of the happiest moments of my life. Every hostage came home safe and free.

JUDY WOODRUFF - HOST, PBS NEWSHOUR: The landslide election defeat returned the Carters to civilian life, but they set about on a new life of service that won new respect. In 1982, the former president and wife Rosalind Carter founded the Carter Center, their platform for advancing democracy, peace, and health policy beyond America's borders.

The work took them around the world to places like Nicaragua to monitor elections and Bosnia to try to end years of fighting. As he told the NewsHour during the 2000 Democratic [01:05:00] Convention, it seemed to be ideal work for a former president.

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: The best times of my life have been after the White House. You have served a great nation, the greatest nation on earth, and then you have freedom from political obligations. You have an almost unlimited menu of things that you can either choose or say no.

JUDY WOODRUFF - HOST, PBS NEWSHOUR: His new agenda did lead to occasional run ins with his successors in the White House, as in 1994, when the Clinton White House balked at Mr. Carter's talks with North Korean leader Kim Il Sung on freezing his government's nuclear program, and in 2002, when he made waves in Cuba, meeting with President Fidel Castro and calling for an end to the decades long U.S. embargo.

He was also a vocal critic of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But his diplomatic work, including the Camp David Accords, ultimately won him the [01:06:00] 2002 Nobel Peace Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He remained in the public eye through his final years, and he minced no words in his attitudes about President Trump.

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: There's no doubt that the Russians did interfere in the election, and I think the interference, although not yet quantified, if fully investigated, would show that Trump didn't actually win the election in 2016. He lost the election and he was put into office because the Russians interfere.

JUDY WOODRUFF - HOST, PBS NEWSHOUR: In 2015, he was diagnosed with melanoma, a cancer that spread to his liver and his brain, but underwent a new treatment that sent it into remission.

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: I've had a wonderful life. I've had thousands of friends, but now I feel, you know, that it's in the hands of God whom I worship, and I'll be prepared for anything that comes.

JUDY WOODRUFF - HOST, PBS NEWSHOUR: Through it all, Jimmy Carter remained active, [01:07:00] especially in his well-known work for Habitat for Humanity, building homes for the poor, and he continued teaching Sunday school in his hometown of Plains.

(Latest details on L.A. fires and what it's like to evacuate; Jimmy Carter laid to rest) - The BradCast w/ Brad Friedman - Air Date 1-9-25

BRAD FRIEDMAN - HOST, THE BRADCAST: The world was in the grip of the cold war back in 1952 when a nuclear reactor began You melting down. That reactor located at Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario, Canada, just over 100 miles northwest of Ottawa, had suffered an explosion on December 12th of 1952.

Radioactive material had escaped into the atmosphere and millions of gallons of radioactive water flooded into the reactor's basement. Now, thankfully, no one was injured in that explosion, but the Canadians needed some help to disassemble the reactor's Damaged and melting down core and obviously it needed to be done quickly somehow And hopefully, safely, [01:08:00] somehow.

The United States, at the time, sent a 28 year old guy by the name of Jimmy Carter to help out. Yes, that would be the same Jimmy Carter who is much better known for being the nation's 39th Commander in Chief. And until his passing late last month at the age of 100, the US 's oldest living president. But his service to the country began when he was a teenage plebe at the US naval Academy and continued for four decades after his presidency. According to Jillian Brockel for the Washington Post, back in early 2023, after Carter had announced that he would be entering home hospice care. Of course, only to go on to live for another nearly two years in the years after graduating from Annapolis in 1946, Carter was promoted to lieutenant in the Navy, and he took a dangerous assignment aboard a submarine.

He was away from his young bride, Rosalyn and their [01:09:00] growing family quite a bit. It was in those years that President Harry S. Truman desegregated the military. While, uh, Carter's submarine was docked in Bermuda, British military officials invited white members of the American crew to a party, and at Carter's urging at the time, the entire crew refused to attend because it was segregated.

In 1952, Carter was then selected to join an elite team to help develop the Navy's first submarine. first nuclear submarines. Once he had trained his crew and the submarine was constructed, Carter was to be the commanding officer of the USS Seawolf. Then the partial meltdown happened up at Chalk River.

And then Lieutenant Carter was one of the few people on the planet at the time who was actually authorized to go inside a nuclear reactor. Carter and [01:10:00] his two dozen men were sent to, uh, to Canada to help because of the intensity of the radiation, a human could spend only 90 seconds inside the damaged core, even while wearing protective gear.

First, they constructed an executive. Duplicate of the reactor nearby. Then they practiced and they practiced and they dashed into this duplicate quote, to be sure that we had the correct tools and knew exactly how to use them. Said Carter in a 1976 memoir, each time one of the men managed to unscrew a bolt in the actual reactor, the same bolt would be removed from the duplicate.

And the next man would then prepare for the next step bolt by bolt. Eventually it was Carter's turn. He was in a team of three, quote, outfitted with white protective clothes. We descended into the reactor. So it sounds like they were lowered into it, kind of like Mission Impossible, as I [01:11:00] understand it, and they worked frantically for their allotted time.

Which was, in this case, 1 minute and 29 seconds, where Carter had absorbed the maximum amount of radiation that a human can withstand in a year, at least according to the, uh, to the numbers at the time, as they understood them. The mission, however, was successful. The damaged core was removed, thanks to Jimmy Carter and his squad.

Within two years, that, uh, core had been rebuilt, and it was back up and running, for good or ill. For several months afterwards, Carter and his crew submitted fecal and urine samples to test for radioactivity, but quote, there were no apparent aftereffects from this exposure, Carter wrote back in 1976, just a lot of doubtful jokes among ourselves about death versus sterility.

But in an 18, in an interview with historian Arthur Milnes in 2008, Carter [01:12:00] was not as cavalier. He said for six months, Is urine tested positive for radioactivity? Quote, they let us get probably a thousand times more radiation than they would allow now, he said. It was in the early stages, and they did not know.

Carter returned to, uh, preparing to command a nuclear sub, but soon fate intervened in July of 1953. His final father died of pancreatic cancer. Uh, pancreatic cancer would also eventually kill his mother and all three of his siblings, uh, as the oldest child, uh, Carter sought an immediate release from the Navy to take over the family business after seven years of service and given what he did inside that melted nuclear reactor, I would say after seven years of incredibly brave service, he was honorably discharged in 1953.

But the impact of the incident had a. Lifelong impact on his views of nuclear [01:13:00] power. His biographer, Peter Bourne said that as a young naval officer, he had approached it in a quote, very scientific and dispassionate way. But Chalk River showed him the power of nuclear power to destroy quote I believe this emotional recognition of the true nature of the power mankind had unleashed informed his decisions as President said Bourne not just in terms of having his finger on the nuclear button But in his decision not to pursue the development of the neutron bomb as a weapon If only everyone with their finger on that button had such personal experience and could be trusted with that button.

The Legacy of Jimmy Carter - Ralph Nader Radio Hour - Air Date 1-11-25

RALPH NADER - HOST, RALPH NADER RADIO HOUR: In reading all the articles and obituaries on Jimmy Carter, In the major newspapers, there was very little about his performance in the area of consumer protection, which means, in effect, his work with the regulatory agencies and the people he appointed to [01:14:00] enhance the health, safety, and economic well being.

Of the American people, I found that rather strange, especially since I made a lot of calls trying to urge reporters to cover its consumer area. I was astonished one day during the campaign of Carter in 1976 to get a call from a reporter who said, you know what Jimmy Carter just said? I said, no, he said he wants to outdo you as a consumer advocate.

And he wants to take your recommendations as to who he should appoint to head these consumer regulatory agencies. I said to myself, what? You know, it's not something before or after that I was accustomed to. I thought it was just campaign rhetoric, and it turned out not to be the case. He meant what he said.

He accepted our invitation right after he was elected to address a huge Ballroom of civic advocates in a hotel in Washington, and no one's ever [01:15:00] done that before or since. And then he proceeded to nominate many of the people that I would have recommended. They had the Federal Trade Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Auto Safety Agency.

And the Occupational Safety and Health Administration had the best nominees to date. So he meant what he said. And most prominently, he took a stand against the biggest lobbying effort that corporations have ever mounted against the Consumer Bill. This one was to establish a Consumer Protection Agency to intervene before other federal agencies and make them pay attention to the consumer interest in their deliberations.

Thank you. And if they were arbitrarily not doing that, they could take these federal agencies to court. This was a structural institutionalized proposal, and he supported it all the way. Unfortunately, too many of his Democrats in the Congress [01:16:00] voted against the agency, and it was narrowly defeated. But I wanted to ask you.

Because you poured through all kinds of archives and materials and writing your Jimmy Carter book that nobody reached, if you could comment on his work in this area.

DOUGLAS BRINKLEY: He was a very great admirer of Ralph Nader. You know, you had, by the early 1970s, really had a movement going around the country about consumer activism and advocacy and awareness.

And Carter was in your camp. Part of it was he saw that he had a distrust of big corporations and really big politics of Washington. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he wanted to have a people's movement that people were aware of their right. And so you were one of those people, William O. Douglas was another that he just admired.

And, you know, you had political clout in 1976 and your message was getting across and [01:17:00] Carter wanted to adopt what you were doing and kind of integrated into his White House. And he did. But the bigger problem at the end of the line for him was what you just said, there weren't enough Democrats to back what Carter was trying to do.

I mean, you started losing on that issue, everybody, from Ted Kennedy liberals and muskies of the world to Scoop Jackson in Washington. He couldn't. Bill, the Democratic Party that could push forward a very righteous idea, which emanated from you.

RALPH NADER - HOST, RALPH NADER RADIO HOUR: It is amazing how he lost support among his Democrats. He couldn't even get the Congressman from the Plains, Georgia district in Georgia, a Democrat to vote for the Consumer Protection Agency.

In the last 18 months of his term, he was really overwhelmed by Paul Volcker's high interest rates, too. Try to tame down a spiraling inflation and there was the Iranian hostage crisis that went on. [01:18:00] For a year and was prominently noticed by CBS, Walter Cronkite every night, the end of his session, he would mention it and he was under great pressure to deregulate natural gas, which he finally did and lost his base more and more.

So it's amazing that he did not interfere with either Joan Claybrook, who he appointed as head of the Auto Safety Agency, or Michael Perchick, who appointed chair of the Federal Trade Commission, or Doug Kostel, who appointed head of the Environmental Protection Agency. The ultimate tragedy was when Ronald Reagan came in.

He dismantled these agencies, he put in toadies for business interests, the level of enforcement went way down, and even tore off 32 solar panels that Jimmy Carter put on the White House roof as a punctuation for his desire to convert our economy to renewable [01:19:00] energy. Did he ever criticize these Democrats?

DOUGLAS BRINKLEY: Yeah, he liked very few of them. When he came in, Ralph, in January of 1977, he said the Democratic Party is an albatross around my neck. And he did not care for the liberal wing, the musky Kennedy wing, or the Washington scoop Jackson. He had some fondness for a little bit for Gaylord Nelson and Frank Church.

He should have been able to get a little closer to church. They had a lot of in common. He was very close to meet Carter, to Idaho's secretary of interior, Cecil Andrus, and that was a very effective relationship, Carter and Andrus, because. They were able to do quite a bit with public lands, culminating largely in the big Alaska, December 19, 19, right before he left office in 1980.

But there's Southern Democrats that voted for Carter in 1976 in the Senate [01:20:00] because of, you know, he's a fellow Southerner. They abandoned him. They wanted nothing to do with him and it started really with the Panama Canal and they started distancing themselves and saying, I'm not a Carter Democrat, the national news medium, making fun of Jimmy Carter, his accent, the Washington Post did not like him because Catherine Graham and Ben Bradley really mocked Carter.

They were very much more involved with the Kennedy wing of the Democratic Party. And, you know, he didn't really make a lot of friendships along the way in his presidency. He worked hard, Ralph, from beginning all day long to the end of the day. If he had a dinner, he would eat, and then he'd say, I gotta get back to work.

And he wasn't worried about cultivating Washington relationships. Now, there are individuals in America he became very close to. Andy Young, his ambassador to the United Nations, but that's because Carter's the one that told Andy Young to meet with [01:21:00] the Palestinian leadership in New York, and it blew up that it was secretly done by Andy Young, and Young kind of took the sword for Jimmy Carter.

It resigned, but that came directly from Carter, and Carter knew that Young could have turned on him, and it didn't, and Admired young and they became friends from Georgia on issues of human rights and civil rights and beyond. And then later in life, he had a few psych friends, particularly Ted Turner, who doesn't get talked about, the founder of CNN, you know, is Turner created the Jimmy Carter that everybody's honoring of the post presidency.

Because when Carter would go to Sudan or would go to Chile. Or go to China. He would send a CNN crew to follow ex President Carter and get a report on the news. And that helped open stories up that weren't getting covered in the national news. And, of course, as you know, Ted Turner gave his famous big gift of a billion dollars, I believe, to [01:22:00] the United Nations.

Then he bought all this land, public lands, and Carter liked that land environment conservation issue. He had a very easy hand at that because he really, we call him a farmer, a peanut farmer, but he knew agricultural science and became a first rate conservationist, understanding botany and, and, you know, cycles of planting, and it interests me, Ralph, that that same little belt where Carter's from, you can do a short drive to Tuskegee Institute where, you know, The famous George Washington Carver was known as the peanut man, you know, for all of the agronomic innovations and replenitive or regenerative farming.

And Carter fell into that quite early, and it's very progressive to think around how to feed the world and issues like that, and how to save public land, have clean air, clean water.

Carter 77 - My History Can Beat Up Your Politics - Air Date 12-27-23

BRUCE CARLSON - HOST, MY HISTORY CAN BEAT UP YOUR POLITICS: The presidency of Jimmy Carter is an example of a phenomenon in American politics that is seen in 1977, the presidential honeymoon. The president is elected [01:23:00] conceivably with a large mandate. A little bit of fear in Washington of this new guy coming in who can make or break their political careers, who the American people might like and don't want you to oppose.

Get some respect from the Congress. They have a few months to achieve the maximum amount of their goals. It does seem that successful presidents accomplish things in the first few months. Maybe it doesn't have to be 100 days, but it's those first few months. Carter's story demonstrates the opposite, that if you don't accomplish in the first few months, the whole presidency might be in trouble.

A couple other notes about Jimmy Carter. He has, as you know, become one of the most successful ex presidents in his involvement with charity work in the Carter Center, several diplomatic initiatives, helping sitting presidents with foreign policy at different times, monitoring elections, resolving crises around the world. He's improved his image overall as a person. And polls that are taken [01:24:00] decades after his presidency even see his presidency in a greater light.

I believe that since we've experienced energy spikes in 2008 and again in 2021 and 2022, we understand Jimmy Carter in 1977 perhaps a little better now. As throughout the 80s and the 90s, all that anyone would look back and see the pain of the times associated with him. Maybe that view is controversial. Maybe there's some that think that a different person elected in 1976 somehow wouldn't have those same problems. The energy plan that Carter's going to pass in his next year, changes things dramatically in terms of energy policy. That strategic reserve is still there. We all, well, almost all see the merit in researching new technologies, solar wind, electric cars and hybrid cars and things like that. We see [01:25:00] the, I think it's apparent now, the foresight in those programs in promoting those programs using the bully pulpit of the office, whether it was successful or not.

Other parts of it, for instance, windfall taxes, which was simply removed from the programs, and some parts of the energy plan that Carter had just simply don't work. I mean, it would cry a whole podcast to go into that. You know, but I do think that when energy prices drop in the eighties, because the Saudis who had been holding onto their oil eventually by '83 want cash. And they want to start selling again, and they break the log jam. And that's one of the many reasons that prices go down a bit. And so when you're in a time when costs are less, it's harder to see a president in a time of sacrifice. In a time where energy supplies were limited here. And to look at that.

There's something else here. Presidents, per the Constitutional [01:26:00] Convention, were elected by the Electoral College, a group of supposedly wise men who would be picked merely for the purpose of selecting a president. The president was not originally elected by the people. Though there were proposals for it, it's not what passed. The framers of the Constitution didn't have anything like a mandate in mind. It was Andrew Jackson who started the concept of an election mandate. That produced a mandate that gave the president the idea of being the representative of the people. They're elected by the whole nation. They have a mandate to govern.

Carter takes that extremely seriously. And I think at times too seriously. And I think at times a person that was a democratic president and seen as somebody who's a fan of democracy, and he certainly is, I never thought he was anything else. But was a little, you know, seemed to be a little bit too [01:27:00] enamored with his own election and not the concurrent election of members of Congress, who also had a mandate in each of their districts.

Despite the frenetic energy, the pace of introduction of legislation by the White House, the calendar is the reality. 1977 must end. By the end of it, through all the trials and tribulations, you have a president with a 57% approval rating, which is not bad. And there's really very little reason to believe in 1977, I mean, partisan attacks aside, sure. Ronald Reagan's out there making all kinds of statements, but nobody thinks he's gonna be president. Maybe Ford comes back or something else.

I mean, you know, there's no reason to believe that this political situation won't work. That what Carter's doing won't work. That his approach, his fresh approach won't work. He's come down, no doubt, in [01:28:00] approval rating from 75 to 57 from inauguration day. But disapprove up from 8%, 30%. These problems are gonna linger. But as you end '77, there's no reason to think, no reason to think that this is a president in trouble.

Carter ends 1977 outside the United States. He's in Poland. And he's equating American and Polish aspirations on human rights. He's in the middle of the Warsaw bloc, nations that ostensibly are controlled by the Soviet Union. And indeed, the government of Poland receives aid, military support, and advice. In fact, gets orders from Brezhnev in Moscow. But they have some independence. And they have borrowed a lot of money over the 70s from Western nations. Carter said [01:29:00] he's grateful for the degree of religious freedom that exists in Poland. In Poland, the Roman Catholic Church has been made a partner with the Communist state.

"My own constant hope is that the nations will give maximum freedom of religion and freedom of expression to their people," Carter said. From the Associated Press, "President Carter, hatless and wearing a blue topcoat, pause for a moment in silent prayer today and placed a gloved hand to his face in a gesture of humility at the Warsaw Ghetto Monument, a black stone memorial to the thousands of Jews who held out in the walled ghetto against the Nazis during a shortlived uprising, in 1943. The president then walked over to shake hands with Poles, many of whom shouted "Carter! Carter!" Commenting on the ghetto uprising, Mr. Carter told the crowd, "They died alone, but they live in our conscience.""

SECTION B: FOREIGN POLICY

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering [01:30:00] Section B- Foreign Policy.

The handover of the Panama Canal - Witness History - Air Date 12-12-24

GILL KEARSLEY - HOST, WITNESS HISTORY: I'm taking you back to 1999 and the handover of the Panama Canal.

ALBERTO ALEMAN ZUBIETA: We were all looking for, you know, after 85 years, the day when Panama was going to be all by ourselves in charge of operating and controlling the Panama Canal.

GILL KEARSLEY - HOST, WITNESS HISTORY: That's Alberto Aleman Zubieta. Who was an administrator for the canal when it was transferred from American to Panamanian rule in December 1999. Panama is a very small country, smaller than the US state of South Carolina. Despite its size, it plays a huge role in global shipping. The 80km Panama Canal is a shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean.

A ship traveling from New York to San Francisco through the waterway covers a distance of about 9, 500 kilometers. That's less than half the distance of going around Cape [01:31:00] Horn. Used by around 13, 000 ships a year, it's an amazing sight. As described here by the BBC, just after the handover.

ARCHIVE NEWS CLIPS: The Panama Canal is one of the engineering marvels of the world.

From the brilliant floating lock gates, to the enormous artificial lakes and dams that supply the huge quantities of water, all in all the canal has been an enduring success. Built, run and protected by the USA for the last four score years, the vital waterway has just been handed over to the tiny, relatively poor country of Panama.

It changed everything.

ALBERTO ALEMAN ZUBIETA: First, because we proved to the people of Panama that we have the capability and I think that we can show the world that if we put our heads and minds together we can do and achieve whatever we decided to do. I feel that I've been very lucky and blessed to be allowed to do this.

GILL KEARSLEY - HOST, WITNESS HISTORY: So, going back to the early history, it was finished in [01:32:00] 1914, but as the result of a treaty eleven years before. The United States had rights to the land surrounding it, known as the Canal Zone, and also controlled the waterway itself. Fast forward to 1977. I'm responding to years of Panamanian protest. US

President Jimmy Carter and Panama's General Omar Torres signed two new treaties that meant Panama would get full control. The signing took place in Washington, D. C., with President Carter making a passionate speech.

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: The American people are big enough and strong enough, courageous enough and understanding enough.

To be proud of what has been accomplished.

ALBERTO ALEMAN ZUBIETA: The Panama Canal Treaty was signed on September 7th of 1977, uh, with a 23 year period basically to transfer the canal and all this land back to [01:33:00] Panama.

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: And I believe that this treaty can open up a new era of understanding and comprehension, friendship, and mutual respect throughout, not only this hemisphere, but throughout the world.

ALBERTO ALEMAN ZUBIETA: It's an example of two countries, you know, getting together and, and provided a very unique process that ended up in a transfer that was, actually there were more people concerned about the year 2000 problem, the Y2K, than actually the ships continued to move. Obviously there was a lot of concerns, I would say worldwide.

From the, uh, shipping industry, how Panama was going to run the, the canal, if we were going to continue to invest, if we were going to do the maintenance of the canal as required. Panama, we created this institution with a set of rules that allows the canal to operate very independent from party politics in Panama.

It has its own [01:34:00] budget, the way that we contract the people and so on. It's a very unique institution.

GILL KEARSLEY - HOST, WITNESS HISTORY: The Canal Zone was abolished in 1979. The handover of the actual canal, though, was confirmed as being the last day of the millennium. But, as Alberto mentioned, there was concern worldwide about Y2K and what was known as the Millennium Bug. It was anticipated that there could be problems with the global infrastructure because of the date change.

ALBERTO ALEMAN ZUBIETA: We have the Y2K problem, so there was not going to be any presidents present at the exact date and time when the transfer was going to happen. And therefore, Panama decided that we were going to have this ceremony. Uh, that was going to be held in the locks of the Canary Miraflores on December 15th.

ARCHIVE NEWS CLIPS: Jimmy Carter rode into the famous 50 mile waterway on a mule, the machine that tows ships into the locks. A [01:35:00] crowd of thousands watched.

ALBERTO ALEMAN ZUBIETA: Well, uh, it was a very important day. We have President Carter, the King of Spain, and we have oldest president of the region. President Carter gave a fantastic speech.

ARCHIVE NEWS CLIPS: Jimmy Carter acknowledged that the original canal treaties were unfair, and he told the crowd that handing the waterway back to Panama was the right thing to do.

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: But we must pledge ourselves on part of the United States of America to be a full partner, a harmonious partner, an equal partner in answering any request that come from Panama to make the operation of the canal even greater.

It's the next millennium.

GILL KEARSLEY - HOST, WITNESS HISTORY: Although Jimmy Carter attended, questions were asked over why the current president of the USA, Bill Clinton, wasn't there. There was, though, a unifying speech from his Panamanian counterpart, Murray Moscoso.

MIREYA MOSCOSO: [01:36:00] To the whole world, I say that the carrying out of the Panama Canal treaties is proof that the mutual understanding between nations and diplomatic negotiation are the right ways to resolve conflict between countries.

Everything else only breeds pain and destruction.

ALBERTO ALEMAN ZUBIETA: It was a beautiful moment. We have a huge ship moving through the locks. As the president was providing her speeches to the people who were all assembled there because we were already in a very festive mood.

GILL KEARSLEY - HOST, WITNESS HISTORY: Not everyone was in a festive mood though. There was still some unrest.

ARCHIVE NEWS CLIPS: Outside, protesters rung in the event their own way. These demonstrators were angry about America's 75 year control over the canal. The handover culminates the 31st, when the canal officially becomes Panamanian.

ALBERTO ALEMAN ZUBIETA: It was, uh, you know, [01:37:00] people getting warmed up for the date that for us was, let's say, the important date.

From here on, the canal is run only by Panama.

GILL KEARSLEY - HOST, WITNESS HISTORY: The end of the millennium was approaching, alongside the end of an era for the canal.

ALBERTO ALEMAN ZUBIETA: We raised both flags every day at the Panama Canal Authority building, that is a very majestic building. On December 30th, when we lowered the flags, and the flags were actually handled, the U.

S. flag to the US ambassador, and the Panamanian flag to the President of Panama, Miriam Moscoso. Because that was the last time where the two flags were going to fly together.

GILL KEARSLEY - HOST, WITNESS HISTORY: The most memorable moment for Alberto was the day the canal was transferred from the USA to Panama. December the 31st, 1999.

ALBERTO ALEMAN ZUBIETA: It was kind of drizzling, so we kind of got wet.

For me, rain is a [01:38:00] blessing. At noon, we raised the Panamanian flag and was the only flag flying. on Panamanian territory. People start running towards the post where the flag was being raised. It was amazing to see the people, the reaction of the people of Panama. It was very emotional and actually it was a very beautiful moment in history.

GILL KEARSLEY - HOST, WITNESS HISTORY: The Panama Canal is still as important today as it was then.

Christian Zionism With Daniel Hummel Pt 2 - American Prestige - Air Date 2-27-24

DEREK DAVIDSON - HOST, AMERICAN PRESTIGE: Carter is an interesting guy. He occupies the only lane I think as an evangelical leftist, or left of center president in American history. And I'm curious how that evangelicalism, of that bent, kind of frames the question of Zionism in Israel. He's also an interesting guy because he's, really, the president, where US policy toward Israel has advanced so far that the US has begun doing foreign policy on Israel's behalf with the Camp David Accords, which is a trend [01:39:00] that obviously has accelerated quite a bit in recent years.

But Carter then goes on after his presidency to be maybe the only anti Zionist US, ex-US president. It's sort of, fascinating kind of trajectory that he has, but maybe we could start with the notion of a left evangelical president and what that means in terms of Zionism.

DANIEL HUMMEL: Yeah. And there was a lot of, I, I think I remember one document I was looking at. It was in the American Jewish Committee archives, and it was from 1978 or '79, and he was reading Carter as the wave of what evangelical politics is gonna be. And it was a, there was a line in there that said, "we need to prepare for a million Jimmy Carters in the 1980s." And it's like, wow, what a misread of where the Evangelical politics was going.

Anyway, yes Jimmy Carter's interesting. I mean, part of this is realizing that Jimmy Carter, sure, he was an evangelical, or more precisely in 1976, he was a born again Christian, which was the [01:40:00] big term that was being bandied about that year. He was also a Southern Baptist, and this, he, and maybe that's as important as born again for someone like Jimmy Carter.

And back in the 70s, this is before the Southern Baptist Convention swung to the conservative side in the late 70s and then on until today. The Southern Baptist Convention was very broad in the 70s. It had what was, what were called the moderate wing and then the conservative wing. And Carter was definitely on the moderate wing. And so, you can see even in in the 70s Southern Baptists aren't voting like they do later on in the 80s and 90s so far to the conservative side. So in some ways, Carter was representing a constituency. Now because of the religious politics, the denominational politics and then the broader evangelical developments in the 70s and 80s, Carter becomes this representative of a left evangelicalism, though there's even people further to the left of him, but certainly a more moderate evangelicalism.

He definitely has a different frame for thinking about the Middle East than someone like [01:41:00] Jerry Falwell does, who is a fellow Baptist, but much different in his theology and politics and Carter. I think that the easiest way to think about Carter's view is it's a very religious. I think everything Carter did flowed out of his identity as a Christian. But he saw the Middle East as the homeland of the Abrahamic faiths. And he would use that term very often, particularly strategically in Camp David, because he found it very significant that it was him, a Christian, it was Anwar Sadat, a Muslim, the head of Egypt. And then it was Nakim Begin, a Jew, the head of Israel, that were coming together to try to find peace. And he found that to be very biblically resonant and very, as he would say, Abrahamic resonant. And so if you take the Abrahamic fate- the frame versus say a Judeo-Christian frame, which you can put a bunch of presidents in that one, you can see how there'd be a much different, there'd be a multipolar conversation that would lead to a much different type of politics, a much different expectation of give and take between the different parties than a Judeo Christian [01:42:00] framework, which really sees Muslims and the broader Arab world as outside of the sort of in group or the children, the religious children that are part of this.

So that's the first thing to say about Carter is that he's coming at this maybe with a much different religious frame than even other evangelicals would.

DEREK DAVIDSON - HOST, AMERICAN PRESTIGE: So what's the characterization of Camp David among, let's say the mainstream evangelical community and by that I mean the conservative wing, how do they regard what Carter is doing? Are they pleased that this is gonna maybe work to Israel's benefit or maybe a little bit miffed at the idea of giving up Israel giving up land or what is the, what's the sort of impression that they have?

DANIEL HUMMEL: They're mostly skeptical. They are observing Carter making critical remarks in press releases or in press conferences and elsewhere, about settlers, even in, 1977, 1978. So, they're already skeptical that Carter is not on board with that. [01:43:00] They know that he is theologically different from them. So, he doesn't have the dispensational theology. He doesn't have much conservative Baptist theology. He's a more moderate Baptist in that sense. But they're also torn because Menachem Begin is engaging in these talks as well and they tend to like Begin. And so there's often the dynamics of the sort of public conversation is demanding that Begin get- not be boxed in that begging get room to negotiate. Ultimately, this is what I was saying before about the deference to the Israeli perspective. Ultimately, most evangelicals, particularly those who are involved in organizations that are trying to work in Israel or work with the Israeli government, they are ultimately skeptical and critical whenever they feel like Begin is not getting his fair share. And so that, of course, plays into a deeper sort of a deeper level of politics where Begin is then leveraging these critics, or these potential critics, in the US to try to get what he wants as well and try to put pressure on Carter [01:44:00] through those channels as well. But ultimately when the deal is signed the evangelicals accept it. They don', try to force a change or anything. But they are disappointed, among other things, that Israel's giving up so much historic, or seemingly biblical land, including the entire Sinai Peninsula. Also, there's a few settlements that are have to be evacuated because settlement activity had already started in the 70s in the Sinai Peninsula. And they're critical of that as well. And that'll be a pattern as well as, this is one of the areas where there's a big tension with the Israeli government is because when the Israeli government does decide to somehow give up land or pull back settlers, they do this in Gaza in 2005 as well, you get critiques from certain quarters of Christian Zionism that this is going against God's plans, or this is going against the covenantal relationship. And now those are, tensions that they have to negotiate.

DEREK DAVIDSON - HOST, AMERICAN PRESTIGE: Just as a final, my final question on Camp David, there was this two-pronged approach that Carter took at Camp David. One was to [01:45:00] negotiate a direct peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. But the other was this framework for Middle Eastern peace that he was pushing. That Begin and Sadat both kind of said, "yeah, yeah, sure we're behind that," and then they didn't do anything with it, and they just negotiated the direct peace treaty.

I have to imagine that evangelicals in the US were at least happy that the framework for Middle Eastern peace didn't go anywhere, and that this was limited to just an Egypt-Israel process.

DANIEL HUMMEL: Oh, yes, of course. They, for certain theological reasons, they're skeptical of the idea of a framework for peace being achievable. That there is, for many of these evangelicals who believe in a certain end time scenario, like the Middle East is just going to be, plagued with wars and destruction until Jesus comes back. And so they're skeptical of peace in that way. There's also part of their particular prophetic beliefs is that there will be a false peace deal that is [01:46:00] imposed on the region from the Antichrist. We're getting into real real left behind territory here, but the Antichrist will force a peace deal on the entire region that's ultimately a false peace and ultimately leads to Israel's destruction. And so you get references to these types of things when you, when any president starts talking about a framework for peace in the Middle East, this is one of the canars that comes up from the more , the certainly the more bold Christian Zionist sectors is that this feels like the "false peace" that we need to watch out for and we need to mobilize against.

Carter's was a version of that, but it was it was so unenthusiasticly picked up by the parties themselves, like you mentioned by Egypt and Israel that it never really even became, a reality that they could respond to.

Jimmy Carter Championed Human Rights But Also Funded & Armed Indonesia's Genocide in East Timor - Democracy Now! - Air Date 1-10-25

BRAD SIMPSON: I think that we should recall that in 1975, the United States effectively pulled out of Southeast Asia just as Indonesia was invading East Timor, with U.S. support, on December 7, 1975. Shortly after President Ford and then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger left Jakarta, Indonesia invaded East Timor. Over the course of the next year, [01:47:00] they killed upwards of 10% of the population, an invasion that was entirely financed and armed by U.S. weapons. The CIA estimated that about 95% of the weapons used by Indonesia in its invasion were provided by the United States.

And so, when Jimmy Carter became president in January of 1977, he confronted an ongoing genocide, which many officials and journalists were already describing as the worst human rights crisis in the world at the time. And Jimmy Carter, like his top officials, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and Zbigniew Brzeziński, were primarily concerned with reassuring right-wing allies in the region, such as Indonesian President Suharto, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos and the South Korean government, that the United States was still committed to providing military and economic assistance. And we see this right from the start, that when Carter was evaluating his policies toward Southeast Asia, his national security [01:48:00] adviser, Zbigniew Brzeziński, reassured his staffers that the Carter administration would not be and should not be prioritizing human rights in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from Southeast Asia and the end of the Vietnam War.

And throughout Carter’s administration, although Carter himself may have been sympathetic to human rights in other parts of the world and actually did curtail U.S. military assistance to governments in Latin America and was very good, for example, in enforcing an arms embargo against Rhodesia, in Southeast Asia, Carter really continued the policies of the Nixon and Ford administration. Between 1977 and 1979, the Carter administration more than doubled U.S. military aid and sales to Indonesia, precisely at the moment when the atrocities that Indonesia was carrying out, which included mass murder, the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, and starvation and disease that killed tens of thousands, was escalating into [01:49:00] a genocide.

And the Carter administration’s response, at least those of his top officials, was to lie before Congress. In the spring of 1977, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke and his deputies lied to Congress and said that Indonesia had effective control of East Timor, that the situation was calm, and that the majority of those who had died had died before Indonesia’s invasion. And they used these lies to justify continuing to expand military assistance and weapons sales at a time when congressional human rights supporters and some human rights supporters within his own administration, including the new assistant secretary of state for human rights, Patricia Derian, were calling on the Carter administration to halt weapons sales and weapons aid to Indonesia because of the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in East Timor.

And the Carter administration’s response was pretty illuminating. The CIA, in the spring of 1977 and [01:50:00] into 1978, told the Carter administration that Indonesia was literally running out of weapons, running out of bullets and bombs, because of the intensity of its bombardment of East Timor, and that the Suharto regime was requesting a doubling of military assistance so it could more effectively prosecute that war. And in 1978, the Carter administration actually increased military sales to Indonesia, including the provision of ground attack fighters, such as OV-10 Broncos, A-4 and F-5 ground attack fighters, which the administration knew would be used to bomb and attack the defenseless civilian population of East Timor.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Brad, we just have a minute to go. If you can summarize the presidency to the post-presidency, the post-President Carter, and the human rights framework he put forward, that was applied and not applied in [01:51:00] different situations?

BRAD SIMPSON: I think we should acknowledge that President Carter was the first president to elevate human rights to an idea that should guide U.S. foreign policy, at least in theory. I think what he also showed is how difficult it is for even well-intentioned presidents to support human rights, when the vast majority of the U.S. foreign policy apparatus believes in a more hawkish foreign policy that’s designed to support military dictators around the world with U.S. military aid and sales. And the fact that Carter was not able to sort of elevate human rights as he might have wished in East Timor and Indonesia is a reminder of the challenges that activists and human rights supporters in the U.S. and around the world face in trying to get the United States to actually support human rights and do more than give lip service to the idea that human rights should be a guiding principle in U.S. foreign policy.

Camp David's Failures: Jimmy Carter's Opposition to Israeli Apartheid Wasn't Enough to Secure Peace - Democracy Now! - Air Date 1-10-25

STUART EIZENSTAT: Jimmy Carter’s most lasting achievement, [01:52:00] and the one I think he was most proud of, was to bring the first peace to the Middle East through the greatest act of personal diplomacy in American history, the Camp David Accords. For 13 days and nights, he negotiated with Israel’s Menachem Begin and Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, personally drafting more than 20 peace proposals and shuttling them between the Israeli and Egyptian delegations. And he saved the agreement at the 11th hour — and it was the 11th hour — by appealing to Begin’s love of his grandchildren. For the past 45 years, the Egypt-Israel peace treaty has never been violated and laid the foundation for the Abraham Accords.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: The Abraham Accords are the bilateral normalization agreements between Israel and, as well — and the United Arab [01:53:00] Emirates and Israel and Bahrain, signed in 2020.

In 2006, years after he left office, Jimmy Carter wrote a book called Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, in which he compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to South Africa’s former racist regime. It was striking for a former U.S. president to use the words “Palestine,” let alone “apartheid,” in referring to the Occupied Territories. I went down to The Carter Center to speak with President Jimmy Carter about the controversy around his book and what he wanted the world to understand.

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: The word “apartheid” is exactly accurate. You know, this is an area that’s occupied by two powers. They are now completely separated. The Palestinians can’t even ride on the same roads that the Israelis have created or built in Palestinian territory. The Israelis never see a Palestinian, except the [01:54:00] Israeli soldiers. The Palestinians never see an Israeli, except at a distance, except the Israeli soldiers. So, within Palestinian territory, they are absolutely and totally separated, much worse than they were in South Africa, by the way. And the other thing is, the other definition of “apartheid” is, one side dominates the other. And the Israelis completely dominate the life of the Palestinian people.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Why don’t Americans know what you have seen?

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: Americans don’t want to know and many Israelis don’t want to know what is going on inside Palestine. It’s a terrible human rights persecution that far transcends what any outsider would imagine. And there are powerful political forces in America that prevent any objective [01:55:00] analysis of the problem in the Holy Land. I think it’s accurate to say that not a single member of Congress with whom I’m familiar would possibly speak out and call for Israel to withdraw to their legal boundaries, or to publicize the plight of the Palestinians or even to call publicly and repeatedly for good-faith peace talks. There hasn’t been a day of peace talks now in more than seven years. So this is a taboo subject. And I would say that if any member of Congress did speak out as I’ve just described, they would probably not be back in the Congress the next term.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: President Jimmy Carter. To see that whole interview we did at The Carter Center, you can go to democracynow.org.

For more on his legacy in the Middle East during his presidency and beyond, we’re joined in London by historian Seth Anziska, professor of Jewish-Muslim relations at University [01:56:00] College London, author of Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo.

What should we understand about the legacy of President Carter, Professor Anziska?

SETH ANZISKA: Well, thank you, Amy.

I think, primarily, the biggest lesson is that when he came into office, he was the first U.S. president to talk about the idea of a Palestinian homeland, alongside his commitment to Israeli security. And that was an enormous change from what had come before and what’s come since. And I think that the way we understand Carter’s legacy should very much be oriented around the very deep commitment he had to justice and a resolution of the Palestinian question, alongside his commitment to Israel, which derived very much from his Southern Baptist faith.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And talk about the whole trajectory. Talk about the Camp David Accords, for which he was hailed throughout the various [01:57:00] funeral services this week and has been hailed in many places around the world.

SETH ANZISKA: Well, I think one of the biggest misunderstandings about the legacy of Camp David is that this is not at all what Carter had intended or had hoped for when he came into office. He actually had a much more comprehensive vision of peace in the Middle East, that included a resolution of the Palestinian component, but also peace with Syria, with Jordan. And he came up with some of these ideas, developed them with Cyrus Vance, the secretary of state, and Zbigniew Brzeziński, his national security adviser. And in developing those ideas, which came out in 1977 in a very closely held memo that was not widely shared inside the administration, he actually talked about return of refugees, he talked about the status of Jerusalem, and he desired very much to think about the different components of the regional settlement as part of an overall vision. This [01:58:00] was in contrast to Henry Kissinger’s attitude of piecemeal diplomacy that had preceded him in the aftermath of the 1973 war. So we can understand Carter in this way very much as a departure and somebody who understood the value and the necessity of contending with these much broader regional dynamics.

Now, the reasons why this ended up with a far more limited, but very significant, bilateral peace treaty between Egypt and Israel had a lot to do both with the election of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1977, as well as the position of Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat and also the role of the Palestinians and the PLO. But what people don’t quite recall or understand is that Camp David and the agreement towards the peace treaty was in many ways a compromise or, in Brzeziński’s view, was a real departure from what had been the intention. And that gap between what people had hoped for within the administration [01:59:00] and what ended up emerging in 1979 with the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty also was tethered very much to the perpetuation of Palestinian statelessness. So, if we want to understand why and how Palestinians have been deprived of sovereignty or remain stateless to this day, we have to go back to think about the impact of Camp David itself.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Interesting that Sadat would be assassinated years later in Egypt when Carter was on the plane with Nixon and Ford. That’s when they say that cemented his relationship with Ford, while they hardly talked to Nixon at all. But if you could also comment on President Carter and post-President Carter? I mean, the fact that he wrote this book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, using the word “Palestine,” using the word “apartheid,” to refer to the Occupied Territories — I remember chasing him down the hall at the Democratic convention when he was supposed to speak. This was the Obama Democratic convention. And it ended up he didn’t speak. And I chased him [02:00:00] and Rosalynn, because —

SETH ANZISKA: Remember that in 1977, there was a very famous speech that he gave in Clinton, Massachusetts, talking about a Palestinian homeland. And that raised huge hackles, both in the American Jewish community amongst American Jewish leaders who were very uncomfortable and were already distrustful of a Southern Democrat and his views on Israel, but also Cold War conservatives, who were quite hawkish and felt that he was far too close to engaging with the Soviet Union. And so, both of those constituencies were very, very opposed to his attitude and his approach on the Palestinian issue. And I think we can see echoes of that in how he then was treated after his presidency, when much of his activism and much of his engagement [02:01:00] on the question of Palestine, to my view, derived from a sense of frustration and regret about what he was not able to achieve in the Camp David Accords.

And his commitment stemmed from the same values that he had been shaped by early on, a sense of viewing the Palestinian issue through the same lens as civil rights, in the same lens as what he experienced in the South, which is often, what his biographers have explained, where his views and approach towards the Palestinians came from, but also a particularly close relationship to biblical views around Israel and Zionism, that he was very much committed to Israeli security as a result. And that was never something that he let go of, even if you look closely at his work in Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Some of his views on Israel are actually quite closely aligned with positions that many in the Jewish community would feel [02:02:00] comfortable with.

The fact that people criticized and attacked him for that, I think, speaks to the taboo of talking about what’s happening or what has happened, in the context of Israel and Palestine, in the same kind of language as disenfranchisement around race in apartheid South Africa. And, of course, as Carter said in the interview you just ran that you had done with him when the book came out, the situation is far worse in actuality with what is happening vis-à-vis Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

SECTION C: CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Up next Section C- Christian Nationalism.

Preparing for War with Bradley Onishi - The Lawfare Podcast - Air Date 12-7-23

KATHERINE POMPILIO - HOST, THE LAWFARE PODCAST: I wanted to also talk about, you know, your comparisons of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. I thought those were especially interesting. You know, it seems like if you were a white Christian nationalist, you couldn't have asked for A better candidate than Jimmy Carter, but as you write, you know, he was the quote wrong type of Christian.

What made him the wrong type of Christian? What went wrong there? And why did so many Protestants and Catholics vote for [02:03:00] Reagan instead of Carter?

BRADLEY ONISHI: Yeah, I think this is an obviously an especially pertinent pertinent question in the in the wake of Rosalyn Carter's death and Jimmy Carter entering hospice.

We have. this situation where Jimmy Carter seems like he's made in a lab. If you're a white conservative Christian, like if you were in a video game and you wanted to create a character for the white conservative Christian in the United States to vote for, it's like Jimmy Carter's your man, right? I mean, Jimmy Carter is born to a Southern family who are farmers.

They live in rural Georgia, not Atlanta, rural Georgia. They are Southern Baptists. They are, uh, folks who prioritized reading the Bible. I mean, Jimmy Carter, uh, had a conversion experience in his teen years and he went on to be somebody who rarely left the house without his Bible. Who did Jimmy Carter marry?

His high school sweetheart, Rosalind Carter. Well, what did they do, uh, when they got of age? I don't know. He joined the military and became a military [02:04:00] officer. So we have a lifelong Southern Baptist from the deep South, born into a rural farming family. He's a family man, never leaves the house without his Bible.

And what more could you ask for? When his daddy dies, he goes home and takes over the family farm, eventually runs for school board. And then in a lightning in a bottle kind of career becomes president. Oh my gosh, this is the guy why would you vote for Ronald Reagan? Ronald Reagan was a divorced hollywood actor like hollywood is the den of sin If you're like a white conservative christian in this country He is not somebody who was really dyed in the wool as an evangelical.

He had various stances on abortion when he was Uh governor of california Not a great relationship with his older children. And if we go back to that whole family values idea, uh, Nancy Reagan, you know, there's a lot of reports that say that, you know, when she was in the white house, she had an astrologist follow her around and kind of help her, uh, navigate life.

No, nothing against astrology on my part, [02:05:00] but most white evangelicals see astrology as, uh, the work of the devil, right? Okay. How does Ronald Reagan become your man? Well, Ronald Reagan. Articulated a vision for white christian nationalist america. He said, I will put your values and your policies first. What were those values?

Those values were a hawkish foreign policy. They were opposition to abortion. They were minimizing the federal government. Taking people off what he called the welfare state and so on and so forth. Jimmy Carter, while he was president didn't do that. He appointed more women and people of color to the federal judiciary than anyone before him.

He would not come out with a vehement stance against abortion, even though personally he seemed to be against it. He was not somebody who was a hawk when it came to foreign policy. In fact, he was Really into diplomacy and negotiation, uh, successful or not. He also was just not a [02:06:00] hardline anti gay politician.

He just would not engage in that kind of rhetoric in ways that Jerry Falwell's of the world wanted him to. My argument would be that Jimmy Carter Was too much of a Christian and not enough of a Christian nationalist for the religious right and Jerry Falwell. And so in a way that completely foreshadows this group voting for Donald Trump in 2015, 16, we have Jimmy Carter, this man who never leaves the house without his Bible, teach a Sunday school, and, uh, is a dyed in the wool Southern Baptist who loses.

The vote of white Catholics and white evangelicals to a divorced Hollywood actor who really only discovered religion late in life and was wishy washy on abortion and didn't have a great relationship with his kids. It totally, totally foreshadows what happened with the rise of Trump.

KATHERINE POMPILIO - HOST, THE LAWFARE PODCAST: Yeah. So I want to get into that, you know, we, based off of this, and I think we've covered the myth of Trump.

The Christian nation. How does Donald Trump fit into here? [02:07:00] You said that voting for Trump was once in a lifetime opportunity for many Christian nationalists. Why?

BRADLEY ONISHI: Yeah. So I just want to emphasize the idea that, you know, if we, if we take Christian nationalism, white Christian nationalism, especially as a desire to return the country to its proper order, that, uh, for the white Christian nationalists, the country should look a certain way.

It should feel a certain way and since the 1960s, it has not, whether that's because of abortion, whether that's because of, uh, queer rights, whether that's because of immigration, whether that's because of having a black president with a black family. However you want to talk about it, it seems to them that America is out of order and not working.

So they have put their hope in various people. Ronald Reagan was one of them, and by the end of Ronald Reagan's presidency, they were frustrated. He did not do everything they wanted, and they were a little bit disillusioned. Then we get to the the 90s and the presidency of Bill Clinton, [02:08:00] which was of course something that they did not approve of.

George W. Bush I think is is actually a really good Case in point as to what sets up Trump, George W. Bush wasn't evangelical, George W. Bush was thoroughly conservative in policy. He was a hawk. We don't have to relive all of the details of Iraq and Afghanistan during his presidency to know that. But yet, when he got done, it felt like the itch had not been scratched.

Like there were still gay people in the country and they were just gaining more and more representation. And the country just kept getting more and more like black and Brown and Asian, and, you know, less and less Christian and less and less white. And it just felt like they were losing on every issue, whether it was abortion, whether it was gay marriage, whether it was, uh, anything else, right.

Like we just can't seem to get our enemies in line. And then all of a sudden Barack Obama comes, he's a man named Barack. [02:09:00] He's a man named Hussein, black family, dad from another country, dad from an African country, raised in, in Kansas, but also raised in Hawaii. Like is Hawaii even part of the union? I don't know.

I think so. You know, do we have to change our money to go there? Uh, yeah, I can't remember. Right. Is he, is that even America? Like, I mean, Missouri and Georgia, that's America. I mean, Iowa. Yes. But Hawaii, I don't, I don't trust people. I mean, he's president now. That's weird. Okay. If Jimmy Carter was built in a lab, For the white conservative christian. Barack obama was built in a lab for them to be scared of like to just think this is everything wrong with the country so once obama got into place.

To me, something clicked. It was this. The next guy we, we vote for is not going to be just a Christian. He's not going to be just a politician who, who makes promises like Reagan did. We need a bully. We need the guy that will brutalize the enemies, that will take out the people [02:10:00] causing trouble, and that will put everything in order, policy and law and process and tradition be damned.

We don't need that. What we need is someone to take care of business. We, I don't care if he's nice. I don't care how often he attends church. I don't care if he knows the difference between two Corinthians and second Corinthians. I don't care how many times he's been married. God can use him to save this nation.

And the support was there in 2016. It only grew in 2020. And there's really no indication it's going to wane in 2024.

Straight White American Jesus Weekly Roundup: Jimmy Carter vs Elon Musk Part 1 - Straight White American Jesus - Air Date 1-3-25

DANILE MILLER - HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: Randall Balmer, a friend of the show, a very well known historian of evangelicalism, we've talked with him on Straight White American Jesus before, wrote a piece in Politico, and one of the things he noted is he said that Carter's death symbolically represented the end of what he called "progressive evangelicalism." And what he meant by that was a kind of evangelicalism that was concerned with what we would now call social justice. It was concerned with, to put it in biblical [02:11:00] parlance, the least of these, or in prophetic language, the poor, the orphan, the widow. It was a vision that said that part of what it was to be a Christian in the world is to create a more just and equitable society, that that was part of the Christian mission.

Now, the people who don't like Carter, they would say he's woke. That's what it would be. Ron DeSantis or somebody like that would say that he's just a woke politician. That's who he was. That's if we wanted to contextualize him now. And it's just as a reminder that relates to this and Brad, I know you've talked about this a lot. We've talked about it. You write about it and discuss it. What really caused the break between him and the religious right was the threat to take away the tax exempt status of Christian schools over the- that were segregated. He was forcing desegregation. That was part of this vision of a more just, equitable social society and so forth.

So we know all of that. We've talked about that. What I want to think about here is just how evangelical and traditionally Baptist Carter was. Because I think it's easy to look at him and say, "Well, he's a guy [02:12:00] who had personal faith, but didn't bring it into his politics." And I think that that's not the right read. I think that if we understand Carter and contextualize where he was coming from, in the 1970s, in Southern Baptist life in the 1970s, he was a very, very committed Southern Baptist president. And I think that that's, I think it's a thing to know and to see.

BRADLEY ONISHI - HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: So one comparison point would probably be Tim Walz. So Tim Walz is Evangelical Lutheran, and by all accounts, he's a regular church goer. But when you do deep dives on Tim Walz, he's kind of the guy that's like, "Yeah, I'm a Christian, but I don't really talk about it." And I think what you're saying about Jimmy Carter is, he was definitely a Christian. He definitely talked about it, but just not in the ways that we expect.

DANILE MILLER - HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: Or even Biden, who would talk about, "I'm Catholic and I have these views on abortion," back when, he was more sort of moderate on abortion and he'd say, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna, carry out the laws of the land and the will of the people and so forth.

That wasn't really, I think, how Carter sort of fits into this model. So the first point I want to bring out is just specifically how Baptist he [02:13:00] was. His politics and his administration clearly embodied and expressed a separation of church and state. He did not have a vision of simply appointing Christians to government. He didn't want to govern from the Bible. He wasn't quoting scripture passages and saying this is the law of the land or things like that. They all expressed a form of secularism, but it was a secularism that had deep roots in his own religious tradition. And I know I've talked about this in the past, but it sort of continues to surprise people.

But Baptists in the 18th century, Baptists in the 17th, 1700s rather, they were proponents of separation of church and state. Thomas Jefferson's famous line about a wall of separation between church and state, it's not in the Constitution. It was in a letter he wrote to the Danbury Baptist Association, and he wrote it because Baptists had supported the formation of the First Amendment. They supported separation of church and state. And not just Baptists, there were other non conforming religious groups like Quakers, who also affirmed separation of religion and state because their own religious traditions had undergone [02:14:00] persecution. So Baptists believed then, that it was the responsibility of the church, not the state, to convert people to Christianity.

That if their God was who they said their God was, and their gospel was as true as they thought it was, that was their job. And that was God's job to go and convert people, not the state. And they also felt that the state should be neutral with regard to religion. And I say this all the time, this was not a view that said all Christians should be created or treated equally. There were Baptist thinkers in early centuries who said, it applied to Jewish people. It applied to Muslim people. It applied to freethinkers, or what we would now call atheists or humanists. They had a broad vision of this. So in not imposing this vision of Christian America, or what now passes as a vision of Christian America, Carter was being a good Baptist.

And I think part of the interesting thing about this is that he also reflected battles going on within the SBC at the time. So, In the 70s, the Southern Baptist Convention, largest Protestant denomination in the US, we talk about people like Al Mohler and [02:15:00] others who are central figures in this super conservative denomination.

In the 1970s, it was controlled largely by theological moderates. Their opponents called them liberals. They were not liberal by any sort of contemporary theological standard. But Carter's Christianity reflected that strain of Southern Baptist life. In 1979, conservatives within the denomination took control. They won the highest post in the denominational hierarchy, they appointed conservatives. And that began a long process that is still ongoing of moving the whole denomination pretty far to the right. That's what coincides with the formation of the religious right. That's what brings about the Southern Baptist Convention we have now. That's what brings about, I mentioned Al Mohler, somebody who far from now arguing for separation of church and state as a traditional Baptist doctrine, is busy talking about the Augustinian city of God and, having to have a theocratic society and so forth. So, all that, some of the Southern Baptist stuff, I got a couple things to say about the social vision, but I want to jump in to see if you have [02:16:00] Quaker or other perspectives on Carter and separation of church and state, and what that means for a religious person, a person of deep religious commitment to affirm the separation of church and state.

BRADLEY ONISHI - HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: Yeah, there's a lot to say here, and I want to turn to Amanda Tyler, friend of the show, leader of the Baptist Joint Committee. Somebody who's written a book called How to End Christian Nationalism. I've interviewed Amanda and spoken with Amanda and appreciate Amanda very much. She wrote in Time this week about Carter as somebody who did exactly what you're saying, Dan, in terms of the separation of church and state.

And I just she included in her piece some great quotes from President Carter himself. So let me read a couple of those. "'I think that prayer should be a private matter between a person and God,' then President Carter told a group of news editors in 1979 concerning Supreme Court rulings against mandatory government sponsored prayers in public schools in 1962 and 1963."

Quote, "I think the [02:17:00] government ought to stay out of the prayer business and let it be between a person and God and not let it be part of a school program under any tangible constraints, either a direct order to a child to pray or an embarrassing situation where the child would feel constrained to pray."

He told the editors that he made these statements because he was a Baptist, exactly as you're saying, Dan. And so, I think one thing, there's a lot of ways to remember Jimmy Carter. He was not a perfect person, there's things we could talk about in terms of Central America and other things. He was not the most effective president, and so on and so forth.

But I think what stands out in these- this moment, as we remember him, is the ways that he was able to articulate a Christianity as part of his identity that recognized that Christianity and the kingdom of God were about, not forcing or constraining, but about persuasion and acceptance.

And, this quote really exemplifies that. I'll give you one more here that speaks to your point, and I'll throw it back to you [02:18:00] before I jump in on some other issues later. 2010 Autobiography, A Full Life, Reflections at 90. This is Jimmy Carter. "My religious faith had become a minor issue during the 1976 campaign when I responded yes to a reporter's question, 'Are you a born again Christian?' Some reporters implied that I was having visions, or thought I received daily instructions from heaven. My traditional Baptist belief was that there should be strict separation between church and state. I ended the long standing practice of inviting Billy Graham and other prominent pastors to have services in the White House, and our family assumed the role of normal worshipers in a church of our choice."

Of all the things about Jimmy Carter that I appreciate, this is in the very top. In a time, Dan, when Billy Graham was a regular at the White House, whether you were Richard Nixon or any other president. At a time when Jerry Falwell was touring the country holding I Love America rallies, where at the end of those rallies he had an altar call, but it was for America.

At a time [02:19:00] when the more- what would become the moral majority was ascendant and there was a, basically a civil war and a takeover happening in the Republican party, Jimmy Carter is the kind of guy that doesn't soft play it. He's like, Hey, Billy, guess what? Not invited anymore. You can stay home. Why don't you you go see your wife or, hold a rally? You don't need to come over to the white house anymore.

Like that takes guts, man. And because. There are so many lobbyists and power players in Washington, Billy Graham at the time was one of them. To say no to Billy Graham was to say no to a whole lot of people that would have glad handed Carter, helped him get a better image among the evangelical right, and so on and so forth. And Carter was just like, 'nah, I'm good, bro. I actually need to catch up on some things tonight. So don't come over, Billy.' That's just- that's the thing. And I appreciate it. I don't know if I can convey here briefly and succinctly, what it took to say no to the evangelical power complex in that way. And he did it. And it's something I remember.

SECTION D: REPUBLICAN RATFUCKING

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally Section D- [02:20:00] Republican Rat Fucking.

AP x Nonzero - Jimmy Carter vs. Donald Trump w/ Robert Wright - American Prestige - Air Date 1-10-24

ROBERT WRIGHT: I get there is justifiably I think an awareness of the contrast between a Carter and a Trump in terms of just sheer decency You know and that's like an old fashioned word.

I I have not spent much of my life complaining about a decency. Believe me I have many forms of it i'm actively in favor of but You know, it really is a word that captures a lot of what drives me crazy about trump He's just not a decent human being in many senses of that word Carter's obama with

DANIEL BESSNER - HOST, AMERICAN PRESTIGE: his kill list a decent human being this is what drives me mad like obama Every tuesday would look at the kill list.

I mean what if you run the imperial states I think it's worth asking to what degree you can be a decent human being. And that's what I would say about Jimmy Carter. Uh, and this is basically, you

ROBERT WRIGHT: can, you can define it strictly enough to exclude all presidents and all human beings if you want, but I mean, and, uh, and as far as Carter, You know, he was a conscientious, [02:21:00] look, of course he's a, uh, behind it all is a lot of raw ambition.

He became president. Of course there is. And of course, people who worked for him can tell stories about how he wasn't always a Sunday school teacher, but you know, he really, uh, you know, he was kind of, I would say a serious Christian in the sense that he really worked hard to abide by what he saw as like the rules of the Christian life.

Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, I, I, I just respect people who take morality seriously. Trump does not, he is not in any sense, a moral human being. And, uh, I would contend. And so that's the big contrast. I mean, as for, uh, that it's the first thing that comes to my mind, and I think it's a lot of people, it struck a lot of people maybe without them.

articulating it in exactly that way. Um, you know, his foreign policy, uh, you know, I just learned that there, uh, I, I only for the first time read up [02:22:00] on kind of the intramural struggle before he appointed his people over who the people would be. And apparently George Ball was in running for, uh, running for secretary of state.

DANIEL BESSNER - HOST, AMERICAN PRESTIGE: It's

ROBERT WRIGHT: a big was big started off as national security security

DANIEL BESSNER - HOST, AMERICAN PRESTIGE: advisor. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and Cyrus Vance was the Cyrus Vance

ROBERT WRIGHT: was who you know I don't really know that much, uh, about him. Um,

DANIEL BESSNER - HOST, AMERICAN PRESTIGE: well, I mean, what do you think? Okay. So here's the argument against Carter basically introduced neoliberalism and ended detente.

So that's the argument against Carter from the historian's perspective. I think pretty much everyone likes his post presidency.

ROBERT WRIGHT: Ended detente in the sense of doing the Afghanistan intervention or started launching that.

DANIEL BESSNER - HOST, AMERICAN PRESTIGE: Spig was very, very anti Soviet and did, did basically did everything he could. To basically bring detente to the end, setting the stage for the second cold war of Ronald Reagan of the early days, I

ROBERT WRIGHT: mean, that's

DANIEL BESSNER - HOST, AMERICAN PRESTIGE: his criticism of him

ROBERT WRIGHT: was in some ways, I think a very smart and wise guy.

I mean, wise in the good sense, wise in [02:23:00] the good sense. You know, if you listen to some of the things he said after 9 11, some of the things he warned against Brzezinski. They were, he was smart. He, you know, he said like, look, here's what's going to happen. Every country around the world is going to convince us that they're, the local, whatever local insurgency they're dealing with is part of the global war on terror, and they're going to suck us into it, which is exactly what happened.

And we fell

DANIEL BESSNER - HOST, AMERICAN PRESTIGE: for it hook, line, sinker. And, but,

ROBERT WRIGHT: but he did, perhaps because of his Polish heritage, I don't know, he did have You know, Jimmy Carter also gets credit for the phrase inordinate fear of communism. Well, unfortunately, Zbig had it, at least when it assumed the form of Soviet communism. He fucking hated

DANIEL BESSNER - HOST, AMERICAN PRESTIGE: communism.

I mean, he was Polish. But he

ROBERT WRIGHT: had a thing about the Soviet. Yeah, I mean, remember the Carter years on the China front? This is when, uh, the kind of, uh, the various policies that are now being questioned by China hawks. Uh, kind of took [02:24:00] shape. I, I, sure. I mean, the one China

DEREK DAVIDSON - HOST, AMERICAN PRESTIGE: policy comes out of right out of Carter's administration.

Sure. So, so, but even that, I mean, even that was, was a strategic move against the Soviets, right? I mean, to cozy up to China. That's

ROBERT WRIGHT: what I'm saying. He's big head of penis bonnet about the Soviets. And that I think worked the whole thing. That's the verdict of the presidency.

Why Trump Must Be Punished For Criminal Behavior With Danielle Moodie - The Muckrake Political Podcast - Air Date 3-21-23

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, MUCKRAKE: This article came out this weekend and it should basically be on every corner on every wall. Peter Baker came out, he had talked to, um, Um, uh, Ben Barnes, who came out and said that back before the election of 1980, that him and the former governor of Texas, who, by the way, I think Nick is going to have something to say about this, John Connolly had gone over to the Middle East and repeatedly met with Middle Eastern leaders to tell them to get a message to Iran, to hold on to 52 American hostages until after the 1980 election between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Uh, this [02:25:00] article is very, very thorough. It's been backed up. Also, it seems that the Reagan campaign knew full and well what was happening, which, again, let me check my notes, uh, amounts to treason.

Now, before we go around talking about this, I want to go ahead and say, I think even if this wouldn't have happened, that Reagan probably would have beat Jimmy Carter. I think that that was going to happen in 1980, but we'll never know! We have literally no idea how that would have played out. This is unthinkable.

Absolutely maddening. Danielle, how did you feel reading this? Did you feel like you'd been taking crazy pills?

DANIELLE MOODIE: I, is this, I, all I can think to myself is like, is this what Republicans mean when they refer to, we need to go back to the Reagan years? Like, is this, is this it? Because so foundationally as a value point, they have always been putting party ahead of country.

Right. Like as a, so you go to Nixon. Yeah. And you're saying you prolonged the [02:26:00] Vietnam war. Do you know how many Americans died in the Vietnam war? You go now to this 1980 bombshell and learn that again, to score political points, they were willing to hold the lives of 52 Americans. For just a little bit of time to buy an election.

I just you know It's amazing that we think to ourselves That the party over country is something New when it is as old as time itself for republicans But yet we have allowed them to to cede and control words like Patriotism, they're the flag waving party and they don't know a goddamn thing about anything that the flag actually [02:27:00] stands for.

So, you know, you say, Jared, as you're laying it out, like it's a bombshell and we'll have repercussions. Well, check my time machine. We're like 40 years past this. No one was ever held accountable. Nobody will be held accountable, right? Reagan will still be there. They're not going to change the airport name.

Right. In Washington DC, he'll still be, you know, held up as a hero and as a, and as the Republican when he's same lying ass, just like George W. Bush, just like Nixon, just like Donald Trump. That will do anything to win an election, and to your point, Yes! I think he would have won!

Right? So, I, like, It don't matter. It's amazing to me that they're going to the lengths that they're going to now to erase history. Where, to your point, no one gives a shit about history. Right? [02:28:00] Because we're not going backwards. And I know we're gonna talk about Iraq soon too. We're not going backwards to actually hold people accountable for their treason.

Right? And lies and destruction of entire country. We're not doing that.

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, MUCKRAKE: By the way, Nick, I, I, I'm going to give it to you in just a second. But I also, I I've been waiting to hear what you have to say about this for a couple of days. I know, I know a lot of what's getting ready to happen, but before we do, I want to point out part of the reason that why that has happened is because Fox news, the Republican party, the media that, that has been bought and sold.

Most of the people will never hear about this. Yeah. They will never ever encounter. It's not going to be talked about on Fox news. Ronald Reagan has become a mythical figure. They don't even deal with who he actually was and what he actually passed. They have no idea who he is. They have no idea that he gave amnesty to immigrants.

They have no idea that he, he ran up deficits left and right. It's a completely mythical fake version of him. And so this will [02:29:00] never even come on the radar. Now, my good friend, Nick Houselman, give it to me and give it to me. Good. I cannot wait.

NICK HAUSELMAN - HOST, MUCKRAKE: So you have to forgive me if, uh, I'm a little bit all over the place because this is a, you a near dear to my heart of subject to it.

The very quickly I wanted to mention that, you know, Swar Schwarzenegger in 2004 used, uh, Richard Nixon as an applause line, and that signaled to me that, okay, all bets are off. These people are gonna be rehabbed and nothing they did that was bad will ever be considered bad. And then the myth just keeps growing.

And then it's not surprising that, of course, Reagan, of all people. By the way, the reaction when you try and point out anything that Reagan might have done wrong to people who were like Reagan, it is like, uh, an affront to their, their entire, uh, family, you know, like the, it's really kind of, uh, frightening how, how, uh, belligerent they can get.

But here's the thing we've known about this October surprise for forever. The evidence has been very compelling. Probably. I mean, I even think that Carter mentions it in his biography or autobiography that I read where he had [02:30:00] already negotiated the entire release of the hostages. Everything was all set in the place.

Don't forget. They got released on the day of the inauguration. It's not like Reagan came in there and I'm like within an hour and like to somehow negotiated the whole thing. So we knew this. It was very compelling on both sides, Iranians and Americans.

Weekly Roundup: Jimmy Carter vs Elon Musk Part 2 - Straight White American Jesus - Air Date 1-3-25

BRADLEY ONISHI - HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: He was born and raised a Southern Baptist, served as a missionary. Supported his church at every turn and married his one and only love. Carter's politics, on the other hand, were not aligned with the vision that Paul Weyrich and Jerry Falwell and others had for the United States. They felt he didn't represent the power of the nation.

I just want to stop and say one of the things that dogged Carter as president is that people like Jerry Falwell and other warmongers labeled him as not manly enough. He was a man who listened, a man who wanted diplomacy, a man who wasn't always talking about control and violence and nuclear weapons.

It's in the same ways that Obama was labeled this guy who wears mom jeans and that whole thing, it's very similar. In essence, Carter was Christian enough, but not nationalist or patriarchal [02:31:00] or warmongering enough to satisfy other Christians. The man who embodied family values was characterized as hating the traditional family.

The man who was an officer in the Navy was castigated as unpatriotic when it came to foreign policy. He brought the cross into the White House, but according to his critics, he left the flag outside of the sanctuary. So in 1980, Christian conservatives supported a divorced Hollywood actor with a mixed record on issues surrounding, quote, "family values" and a history of supporting abortion over the Southern Baptist Sunday School teacher who married his high school sweetheart, served with distinction in the armed forces, and often brought his bible with him when leaving the house.

It was the election that made clear that the cross wasn't enough for Christian nationalists. The cross must always be accompanied by the flag. This leads to one final lesson to be learned from the Carter/Reagan election. When it came to voting for Donald Trump, Christian nationalists had precedent for prioritizing politics over morals, and policies over identity.

[02:32:00] Jimmy Carter was born to a poor family in a tiny town in rural Georgia. Donald Trump was born to a rich real estate magnate in New York City. Jimmy Carter was a dyed in the wool evangelical from the time he left the womb. He was baptized as a teenager and committed himself to Jesus Christ wholeheartedly. Throughout his life, Donald Trump has rarely attended church, and to this day, he is religiously illiterate.

Jimmy Carter joined the Navy and became an officer. Donald Trump avoided the draft in Vietnam because he claimed he had bone spurs. Jimmy Carter's father, Mr. Earle, as they called him, was a pillar of his community who helped out his neighbors in ways that would only go noticed after his death. Donald Trump's father, Fred Trump, was arrested after a KKK rally in the late 1920s.

In 1963, Jimmy Carter ran to be part of the Georgia State Legislature, In part, to prevent segregationists from shutting down Georgia schools after the 1954 Brown v. Board Supreme Court decision. In 1989, Donald Trump took out a full page ad in the New York Press, decrying the Central Park Five and calling for the death [02:33:00] penalty. They were later exonerated, of course.

Jimmy Carter built his presidential campaign out of the conceptions of justice inspired by the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and his friend Bob Dylan, (slash Timothy Chalamet). Donald Trump modeling himself after Andrew- modeled himself after Andrew Jackson. Dan thinks that's so funny.

DANILE MILLER - HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: I wasn't expecting that. Sorry. I didn't mean to break in there.

BRADLEY ONISHI - HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: Jimmy Carter appointed more people of color and women to the federal judiciary than any other president before him. Trump employed open white nationalists in his cabinet, including Stephen Biller- Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller.

When Jimmy Carter became president, he put his peanut farm in a blind trust, giving up control of his financial portfolio. As president Trump has used, as president Trump used his power to promote and grow his various businesses across the world. When Carter left the white house, he was badly in debt because those who had managed his blind trust had done so poorly. By the time Donald Trump left the white house, his children earned [02:34:00] nearly a billion dollars of private income while he was in office, and not to mention Jared Kushner's deal for multi billions after Trump left office. After leaving office, Jimmy Carter helped to build 4, 000 houses for those in need through programs related to Habitat for Humanity. Since the end of his presidency, Trump has lived at the private golf resort he owns in Florida.

One of the things I'll just say, and I want to really launch us into Musk and Trump and all that, is Jimmy Carter was also, Dan, in some ways, the last president Middle Class president. So we might get an email here or two about Obama and that's fair, but the Bush family, the Reagan family, no, not even close. Okay. The Trump family, no, he's a fake billionaire, but still he's lived a life of upper class luxury for his entire existence. The Obamas when they entered the white house, yes, I think we're middle class. And I think you could, I think you could probably say that Obama and [02:35:00] Carter came from the same kind of class background in some ways. But, what I'll add to that though, and of course the Obama's being black I'm not going to overlook what the economic challenges that this country has posed to black Americans at every turn, whether it's enslavement, Jim Crow, redlining, and so on. So not overlooking any of that when it comes to the Obama's.

Jimmy Carter was born on a farm. I mean, he was the first president born in a hospital, but he's a farmer, Dan. Tim Walz, I think was notable for a lot of us, because he came off as this like regular guy, a teacher, a military guy, a dad, go out and fix your car, go out and go hunting for turkey. I think a lot of people found Tim Walz endearing because he felt like somebody they might know. Jimmy Carter was one of those people. And you cannot even imagine that. Now, I mean, the Clintons I, come on, by the time Hillary Clinton ran, they were, they were millionaires a hundred times over.

So. I think that's there. Anything else on Carter before we go to some [02:36:00] contemporary stuff here with Musk and Trump and everybody else?

DANILE MILLER - HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: I think, to echo your point about not- have nothing but respect for the achievements of the Obamas, but you also have the University of Chicago educated Barack Obama, I think is another contrast even between, somebody like Carter.

BRADLEY ONISHI - HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: Well Ivy League law education.

DANILE MILLER - HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: So I just to make that point is I think to reinforce that, that, if you wanted some sort of middle class credentials now I think you'd be really hard pressed to find anybody who could have fit that better than somebody like Carter.

BRADLEY ONISHI - HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: Well, and this whole idea of class and money and corruption and, the guy put his family's peanut farm in a trust and the whole time he's president, he's like, 'don't tell me about it. I don't, I legally don't want to know about it.' And when he gets out, it's like he's in debt. So I've said this before in the show, Dan, can you imagine being president and you lose and you're like, well, got to leave the white house and take my solar panels with me, right?

He brought solar panels to, I mean, we haven't talked about it, but he brought solar panels to the white house. And then you're like, well, let me see, let's open [02:37:00] up the books, take a look at the business. And it's like, we lost this much in the last four years. I'm now president and I'm in debt. You want to talk about like identifying with real Americans, real Americans know what it feels like to have debt, mortgage debt, student loan debt, credit card debt.

So that's the thing. And it leads me to the clip that I played at the top, which is Governor Sununu of New Hampshire. Okay. And in that clip, he says that Elon is working as an outsider in Washington. Okay? And I want to break down this clip, Dan, because it really speaks to everything we If you just think of everything we just said about Jimmy Carter, and then we bring in Elon Musk.

He's like, 'Elon's an outsider.' And first of all, Dan, Elon has like billions of dollars in government contracts. He has subsidized so much of his business. His business in many ways relies on government contracts, whether it's in this country, whether it's in Shanghai, whether [02:38:00] it's in other places. He is somebody who gets a lot from the government.

That's number one. So you can call him an outsider. Cause what he's not somebody who's like ever run for office or something. Sure. Whatever. Okay. So there's that, but then Sununu says, 'I'd rather have something successful.' And I liked that. I think I liked that. He's successful. Okay. Dana bash says, 'don't you see a conflict of interest?' And Sununu says, 'everyone has a conflict of interest.' I just want to stop on that point. We've reached a place in our politics, whether it's with Christian nationalists, presuppositionalist theologies from reformed circles those who would say there's no such thing as neutrality, and I just want to point this back to Jimmy Carter.

Jimmy Carter, as a religious person, is like, 'keep God out of the government.' As a financial actor, he's like, 'when I get to the White House, I want to have no financial interest. I want no way for me to gain or lose money that [02:39:00] I know about. When I go to bed at night, when I am president and I have a quiet 10 minutes, I don't want to wonder if I've made money today or think about how I could make money today. I'm done with that."

And here's Sununu saying, 'well, everyone has a conflict of interest.' And my point is like, I totally get it, Dan. You and I have been through the philosophical ringers. Everybody wants to talk. Is there such thing as objectivity? We have said on this show that everybody has feeling and affect and embodiment.

I I understand all of that. It does not mean that as a leader, you can't strive to say, 'I'm going to do everything possible to serve the people of this country, of this community, of this state, with the same status and respect and voice.' You can try that. You can do things to practice that. You can cultivate that.

Credits

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: That's going to be it for today. As always keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about today's topic or our upcoming topics: the disconnect between labor and the left, [02:40:00] and the LA fires and the politics of water in the age of climate change. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at 202-999-3991, or simply email me to [email protected]. The additional sections of the show included clips from Past Present, the PBS News Hour, The Bradcast, the Ralph Nader Radio Hour, My History Can Beat Up Your Politics, Witness History, American Prestige, Democracy Now!, The Lawfare Podcast, Straight White American Jesus, and The Muckrake Political Podcast. Further details are in the show notes.

Thanks to everyone for listening. Thanks to Deon Clark and Erin Clayton for their research work for the show and participation in our bonus episodes. Thanks to our Transcriptionist Quartet—Ken, Brian, Ben, and Lara—for their volunteer work helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work behind the scenes and her bonus show co-hosting. And thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships. You can join them by signing up today at [02:41:00] bestoftheleft.com/support, through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple podcast app. Membership is how you get instant access to our incredibly good and often funny weekly bonus episodes, in addition to there being no ads and chapter markers in all of our regular episodes, all through your regular podcast player. You'll find that link in the show notes, along with a link to join our Discord community where you can also continue the discussion. And don't forget to follow us on any and all new social media platforms you may be joining these days.

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#1683 Oligarchy Unmasked: President Musk, the crackup of capitalism, and the MAGA meltdown (Transcript)

Posted by · January 15, 2025 12:06 PM

Air Date 1/15/2025

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast. Elon Musk is leading the way for his class of tech broligarchs anxious to take over the MAGA movement and shape it to their own ends of deregulation, tax cuts, and lucrative government contracts. The disappointment that is inevitable for the MAGA populists is coming even faster than expected. For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our top takes in about 50 minutes today includes The Reidout, Democracy Now!, The Muckrake Political Podcast, No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen, Bad Faith, Straight White American Jesus and Left Anchor.

Then in the additional deeper dives half of the show, there will be more in four sections: Section A, the Oligarchs; Section B, the MAGA Fracture; Section C, Global Influence; and Section D, Organizing.

The long con of America's ultra-wealthy elites - The ReidOut - Air Date 1-2-25

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: Back in the 1980s, Rush Limbaugh became a radio powerhouse by enthralling mainly white working class men, truck drivers, cops, [00:01:00] and other non college educated blue collar types who spent their work days in their cars or other places where they could tune into AM radio for hours.

AM radio network saw the potential profit in this and syndicated his show to hundreds of rural and small town AM radio stations to pump the Limbaugh show for hours a day, so Rush Hudson Limbaugh III of the prominent and affluent Limbaugh's of Girardeau, Missouri could lean into his golden microphone and tell his audience of ditto heads, as he called them, that real Americans like them were having their pockets picked by the welfare queens, the Brown immigrants and the feminazis. They were the ones making White working class men's lives worse. Not the Reagan revolution, which ended pensions, gutted unions, and slashed away at Lyndon Johnson's great society programs.

No, no. It's the poors who are the problem, not the rich. He was so good as a broadcaster, one of the best ever in the business, frankly. He even helped radicalize Clarence Thomas, according to a [00:02:00] documentary by PBS Frontline.

CLIP: He would listen to Rush Limbaugh as he was doing a long commute and he would have court staff tape record it so he could listen to it when he was commuting.

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: Limbaugh, who ultimately became a billionaire, fit the 80s and 90s perfectly. The lifestyles of the rich and famous era, when Americans practically worshipped the financially successful. Even making a star out of pretend billionaires like failed real estate developer Donald Trump, who was born rich and promptly squandered his fortune on failed real estate deals before he was bailed out by banks and Russia, allegedly.

Rush spawned a slew of copycats, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Mark Levin, Neil Boortz, Sean Hannity, and more. Each of whom had the same general message: poors bad, affirmative action bad, Brown immigrants bad, feminism definitely bad. But the wealthy and oil companies and big business? Good.

CLIP: Charles Koch and David Koch have been outspoken advocates of the free market for over 50 years.

This should send a chill down the [00:03:00] spines of everyone out there who's watching Fox now. Because if you dare to question, you might not have the money of the Koch brothers to defend yourself.

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: Rush was followed by Roger Ailes, who went to work for billionaire Rupert Murdoch, building Fox News, which took his same message that White American voters should focus on crime. No, no, not mass shootings. Black crime. Brown crime. Sexual minorities that make them uncomfortable and illegal immigrants. That's the problem. Not billionaires like say, Rupert Murdoch or the Koch brothers. They deserve the tax cuts and deregulation. We promise it will all trickle down. But we gotta get rid of the welfare, affirmative action, equal opportunity, DEI, CRT, ABCDEFG. That's the real threat.

And as long as you keep focusing on that, we are good. In the modern era, billionaires branched out from bankrolling talk radio and cable news to funding right wing online ventures like Breitbart News, initially bankrolled by the billionaire Mercer family. There's also conservative organizations and think tanks active on college campuses like Turning Point USA, the Federalist [00:04:00] Society, the Young America Foundation, and Americans for Prosperity, which was the Koch money fueled pro-corporate backbone of the Tea Party movement. As well as up and coming podcasters like Charlie Kirk and Ben Shapiro, who offer a younger, slicker feel, but the same message. Poors bad, Brown immigrants bad, blacks and especially Black history and affirmative action bad, DEI bad, Black Lives Matter bad, feminism bad, insurance companies, oil companies, drilling, and rich people? Good.

And while hating on immigration is a core part of the right wing media ecosystem, these right wing outlets have found a form of immigration they do like, namely the migration of rich foreign nationals with inherited wealth into the U. S. where they can buy up tech companies, gobble up small businesses into giant conglomerates and reduce competition and create monopolies while building massive defense contractors that eat up taxpayer subsidies so their billionaire owners can buy up even more companies, lay off people, and traffic in stock buybacks.

In the process, a small group of super wealthy families have gained breathtaking control over [00:05:00] the courts, including the Supreme Court, thanks to Leonard Leo and the Heritage Foundation, and over politicians, through the unlimited donations, the Supreme Court cleared the way for in the Citizens United decision.

They control what we eat, how we shop, and even how much we pay for housing because the super rich own literally millions of acres of farmland and millions of units of housing through private equity firms, making them America's biggest landlords.

They also increasingly control information, what Americans are allowed to know. Jeff Bezos doesn't just control a lot of what we buy via Amazon. He controls the Washington Post. Ditto the South African billionaire who owns the Los Angeles Times, who is even more aggressive about pushing a friendly, pro-rich point of view.

And of course, there's Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire who controls probably the single most powerful disseminator of right wing groupthink ever created, the aforementioned Fox News. The small group of families, the Mercers, the Cokes, the DeVosses, the Ulines, the Bradleys, the Wilkes, and more, plus America's [00:06:00] billionaires and mega corporations, own so much. And you've probably never even heard of most of them, which is kind of great for them.

And then there are the tech entrepreneurs, like Peter Thiel, the born-rich immigrant from South Africa who invested in PayPal, got even richer, and went into private equity, where he employed a Yale graduate who wrote a book dissing Appalachians who changed his name to JD Vance. Thiel also controls a company called Palantir that helps the government surveil you. So yay.

And there's Vivek Ramaswamy, the first generation American son of Indian parents who took Soros money to start his first company, but reps a party that hates liberal billionaire George Soros. Vivek recently lectured Americans about our culture of mediocrity, ranting that a culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math Olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian will not produce the best engineers, a culture that venerates Corey from Boy Meets World, or Zack and Slater over Screech in Saved by the Bell, or Stefan over Steve Urkel in [00:07:00] Family Matters will not produce the best engineers.

Which is weird because the culture he described produced the internet and Facebook. The Winklevoss twins and Mark Zuckerberg created the app after Zuck dropped out of Harvard having basically digitized Harvard's freshman Facebook so men could find dates easier. Ramaswamy, who graduated from Harvard, once had a failed company to supposedly cure Alzheimer's. Here he is selling it on CNBC.

CLIP: I actually think the potential opportunity here is really tremendous for delivering value to patients.

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: Yeah, that company failed. Though somehow, Vivek and his mom made a lot of money by cashing out. And did Vivek try to replicate Steve Urkel along the way? Nah. Here's Vivek mimicking a key aspect of the American culture he'd find so terribly mediocre on the campaign trail.

Yeah, lose yourself indeed. He also did [00:08:00] that act as a college student at Harvard long before running to be president of this supposedly mediocre nation. And then there's Vivek's partner in the pretend agency to cut government spending, Elon Musk, who controls the app formerly known as Twitter and used it along with 200 million dollars to put Trump back in office.

He's now gotten Trump to come out wholeheartedly for visas for lower paid foreign workers to replace Americans in Silicon Valley jobs because you know, Hey, because he's the richest man in the world and Trump needs the money. And what value has Elon created? He was born rich in South Africa, came to America after apartheid fell, and he and his brother got 3 million dollars to invest in their tech company called Zip2. Ever heard of it? Yeah, me neither. Also, his brother says they were working illegally in the U. S. at the time, which Musk disputes.

CLIP: In fact, when they did fund us, they realized that we were illegal immigrants. Well, I'm sure it's a gray area. Yeah. Yes, we were. I was, we were illegal immigrants. Haha.[00:09:00]

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: It's a gray area. Yeah. Okay. And while his super fans worship Elon, like MAGAs worshiped Trump and used to worship Jesus, Elon didn't create Tesla's or the technology behind them. Elon became the company's CEO. He invested in the company, became the CEO, and then he bought the company out, which is actually created by two American engineers from California, Martin Eberhard and Mark Tarpening, who probably grew up watching Saved by the Bell in the nineties.

Crack-Up Capitalism- How Billionaire Elon Musk's Extremism Is Shaping Trump Admin & Global Politics - Democracy Now! - Air Date 1-6-24

QUINN SLOBODIAN: Well, this is really a fixation of Musk that echoes throughout other Silicon Valley thinkers, too, which is a fear that demographic decline is coming more quickly than many of us realize. And that gets read in sort of two ways. On the one hand, as he frequently says, you know, there will be no human civilization if there are no humans. So there’s this kind of universal fear of the reality of sort of long-term slowing birth rates leading to literally fewer humans on Earth.

But more importantly for him is particular humans on Earth. So, if you look at the [00:10:00] kind of conversations he’s had, especially in Italy with members of the Brothers of Italy, the fascist-derived party from which — you know, which Meloni now heads, the fear is the loss of populations of a discrete culture. So he’s worried about the decline of particular European civilizations, particular European cultures, the Italian culture, the British culture. He has endorsed the “great replacement” theory, this notion that liberal politicians are encouraging immigration from nonwhite populations to build their own support, but also, too, to kind of dilute and disorient the native or autochthonous population. So, his pronatalism is not a kind of a general one that sort of hopes that humans can propagate themselves to produce hopefully more solutions to human problems, but it’s the defense of particular human populations which he sees as endowed with more capacity for kind of economic productivity, economic intelligence and sort of economic [00:11:00] performance.

So, his immigration policy and his immigration language is now — in the last two weeks has taken a very hard-right turn. Many people have noticed that. In December, you could have seen him still posting about meritocracy and the idea that anyone can make it in the United States if they work hard enough. Since January 1st, almost exactly, the stream of his posts has been dominated by the faces of men who have been charged with sexual crimes, who are from Muslim-majority countries. He is doing everything he can to sort of hype up very clearly racially coded fear of sexual assault and crimes coming from immigrants on non-Western backgrounds, and pairing that with this idea of immigrants from non-Western backgrounds as sort of welfare dependents who are not feeding into the mainstream economy. So, his demographic fears are very much also part of his kind of hard crime, hard borders policy that is now starting to come to the fore [00:12:00] as his primary talking point.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Let me ask you something. I’m looking at a piece in the Financial Times. “Elon Musk lived in apartheid South Africa until he was 17. David Sacks, the venture capitalist who has become a fundraiser for Donald Trump and a troll [of] Ukraine, left aged five, and grew up in a South African diaspora family in Tennessee. Peter Thiel spent years of childhood in South Africa and Namibia, where his father was involved in uranium mining as part of the apartheid regime’s clandestine drive to acquire nuclear weapons. And Paul Furber, an obscure South African software developer and tech journalist living near Johannesburg, has been identified by two teams of forensic linguists as the originator of the QAnon conspiracy, which helped shape Trump’s Maga movement. [Furber denies being 'Q'.] In short, four of Maga’s most influential voices are fiftysomething white men with formative experiences in apartheid South Africa.” Can you comment on this, Professor Slobodian?

QUINN SLOBODIAN: Absolutely. This is something I’ve written about in a couple of my books. The centrality of southern Africa for [00:13:00] the far right and for neoliberals is quite extraordinary. Rhodesia, of course, has been seen as a kind of a lost cause for the hard right. People might remember Dylann Roof, the far-right mass murderer, talking about his allegiance to the Rhodesian cause. South Africa, in the time of apartheid, was seen as a kind of a last bulwark against the Black socialism of postcolonial Africa. In the time of transition, in the time of Mandela, in the move to “one person, one vote” universal suffrage, in the end of apartheid, it was cast by the far right and by sort of libertarians and neoliberals as a kind of prosperous site of gold production and manufacturing that was now under assault by a socialist, Black-majority government, the ANC.

And for Musk himself, the experience of growing up there with a very authoritarian, dictatorial father [00:14:00] was a very dystopian one, from the way that his biographer recounts it. There’s memories that he recounts, perhaps a little bit gleefully, and perhaps through fabrication, of sort of walking through puddles of blood on the way to rock concerts. He saw it as a kind of a social Darwinist, sort of all-against-all-type environment, which I think has now very much implanted into his mind. I think he discovers that again in the online world of brutal, so-called dungeon-crawling video games, where he spends much of his time, and also in the kind of cyberpunk world of science fiction and films and novels.

So, I think that extrapolation, which is in part based on the reality of very intense intercommunal conflict, but also becomes something that he can kind of embrace to kind of give — to permit his own sort of vision of nihilism, really, and this belief that all alliances are kind of [00:15:00] provisional, you need to defend your own. As we know, he’s sort of been clear about sort of building compounds to which he can retreat, expanding his own genetic pool through, you know, a very large family, using the federal government when it’s useful, you know, tapping into federal budgets, becoming effectively a techno contractor for NASA through SpaceX, selling his services as Starlink, but always, I think, very much with this exit end game in mind, the same way that many people in South Africa have their own kind of gated communities into which they can withdraw, if they can afford it, with their own water systems and their own sort of power supplies. This kind of Octavia Butler Parable of the Sower-type reality is one that someone like Musk has sort of sadistically embraced in a way.

And I think that his sort of accelerationism, by which he makes alliances recklessly, one after the other, with whichever kind of far-right politician appears [00:16:00] on his video feed and has a kind of a distinctive appearance — you know, Tommy Robinson does look like he might have stepped out of a video game. Naomi Seibt, the Alternative for Germany influencer, who he has done so much to boost, sort of cultivates this sort of anime-like appearance. So, I think that, for Musk and Thiel and others, the experience of apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa has, for them, filled this role of a kind of a bad future, which is also inevitable and from which they have to just do everything they can to kind of, you know, hunker down and shield themselves, while also tapping into, of course, the extraordinary profits that are available in doing things like providing surveillance systems, as Palantir does, Thiel’s company; providing weapon systems, as Anduril does, the Palmer Luckey-owned company that Thiel helped back; and the various other ways that the old-fashioned military-industrial complex, I think, is now just being extended with a new kind of Silicon Valley kind of headquarters.

GOP Already At Each Other's Throats While Musk Gloats - The Muckrake Political Podcast - Air Date 12-24-24

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Nick, on the weekend or last week, we were [00:17:00] covering the fact that Elon Musk absolutely scuttled the funding bill in Congress, basically single handedly. Congress eventually passed the funding bill after Musk basically blew this entire thing up. We had an inter party war with the Republican Party over multiple things. Most of the bill ended up getting passed, except for, you guessed it, cancer research, especially cancer research for children. Nick, there is a lot, I think, that we can look at here in terms of how this whole thing played out, the sort of inter party dynamics of it all. Maybe there's some strategy to be gained from this. What was your take of finally seeing the government shut down being averted and the Republican Party sort of going to war with each other?

NICK HAUSELMAN - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: I just think it's going to prepare us for what's going to be in store but, you know, a lot worse. It's just the very, very beginning of how unruly this is all going to be. That said, the process of pulling apart all the different things that they had shoved together in one big, basically omnibus bill, maybe that's not the [00:18:00] worst thing, right?, to be able to do that sort of more separately and then be able to address everything like that.

My fear is that someone's going to be able to have some weird argument like that saying, Look, all the things that Musk and Trump are doing are, those things actually work, you see, and then they manipulate whatever they do to make it seem like it works. And so that might be my biggest concern out of all of this.

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: I want to say, first of all, the fact that we have this debt ceiling thing is absolutely ridiculous. And along the lines of a broken clock being right twice a day, Donald Trump pushing for unlimited debt is both telling in terms of what the Republican Party actually cares about, what their principles are, but also, we shouldn't have this. We should not have these showdowns where Congress gets in a room and the government is either going to shut down or it's not based on who gets what. In this case, this was Musk carrying out a power play, going ahead and previewing for everybody that he basically has control over the Republican Party, and that Trump is more or less just an avatar, a dancing clown out in front of all of this.

So, the MAGA-GOP rift at this point, it's already [00:19:00] showing us one thing that we covered in the first Trump administration, what we always talk about, which is, far right authoritarian movements are dysfunctional. They destroy each other, they attack each other constantly. That is one of the weaknesses, but I do not think that people should take a look at what happened here and think, Oh, it's not actually going to be that bad. It is still going to be very, very bad, but there are vulnerabilities that can be exploited if we're looking at an opposition that actually wants to exploit them, which the Democratic Party, it depends on the day, it depends on the coin flip.

NICK HAUSELMAN - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: You know, it's funny, if you look at it that way, in terms of the debt ceiling and whether or not debt really means anything to a government like the United States and the economy, like capitalism. Obviously we'd want more efficiency, right? We want to eliminate waste, but you don't need to use the boogeyman of your kids are going to be have nothing. the country is going to be destroyed with too much debt. And when you wrap your head around why they want to use that specific reason to cut the budget, you start to get a handle on why they're doing it, [00:20:00] right? It's never been about the debt. It's always been about getting rid of entitlement programs, right? Freeloading people and the people on the couch who don't want to work and all that bullshit. So, you know what I mean? Like, so it just becomes even more clear when they use that kind of line of reasoning and you hear Musk and all those people do it, who'd have no connection to anybody who struggles check to check or month to month to make ends meet. They don't understand anything like that or what the value of what the government does bring to people like that. So, it's, just really enlightening and revealing of where they really are coming from.

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: It's revealing in the way that traditional politics, the narratives that we get through liberal media, especially corporate liberal media, is the idea that, oh, we really wish we could fund all this stuff, like I would support it in a heartbeat, but we really need to take care of the debt.

Meanwhile, one of the reasons that we have a national government is to take on debt, is to go ahead and do these things. And meanwhile, the Republican Party doesn't care about debt when they're creating a war, when they're giving historic tax cuts to the wealthy. It's a cudgel.

And more or less, it's a language that's [00:21:00] been created between the right and liberal moderates. Which is, you can go out and say that you want to take care of this stuff, like again, cancer research for children. This is something that the government should fund, one of the few places where it actually does get funded. But, meanwhile, what's actually happening here, Nick, we go ahead and get the military taken care of, particularly in this bill, Musk had his relationship and connections with China. That was the main thing, making sure that Tesla was going to maintain all of their little inner workings with the government.

Meanwhile, all that happens is that the budget is always going to run the deficit up in the way that the Republicans want it to, and moderate liberals are able to shrug and say, well, you know, we just got to take care of the debt.

Meanwhile, what is happening? The wealth class continues to get their checklist marked off one thing at a time. And again, you see the rift here between Donald Trump and Elon Musk. One person's out there talking about buying Greenland or trying to do something with the Panama Canal. I never thought I would hear about that again. And you have [00:22:00] another guy who is essentially privatizing the government and turning it into an organ for his own enrichment and empowerment.

NICK HAUSELMAN - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: For sure. For what it's worth, the Panama Canal could very well be related to the fact that the Trump organization is being sued in Panama now for not paying taxes.

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Ding, ding, ding.

NICK HAUSELMAN - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: You know, and so, this is the other reason why the conflict of interest is so ridiculous because we saw it already when they put Qatar, as I think it was, on a terrorist watch list because they wouldn't give money to Jared Kushner's fund. And as soon as they did, they were magically taken off that list, right?

So here's another kind of thing where they're going to leverage. And we know about Greenland is because there's minerals there. Guess who needs minerals, Jared?

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Well, I mean, you know, what's funny about it is actually so much of our politics revolves around resource extraction and who is able to get a hold of that. That is also one of the reasons why there's a right wing authoritarian international movement, because we need to make sure that certain countries have their resources and minerals available for the wealth class to extract and extort. And by the way, let's just point out the Greenland thing also has [00:23:00] implications when it comes to eco fascism, which is basically rearing its ugly head right now. But you have one guy, in Trump, who's just out here going wild, which is what he does, and you have Musk who is playing the long game and pulling the strings behind the scenes.

MAGA civil war explodes between Elon & Trump faithful - No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Air Date 12-29-24

BRIAN TYLER COHEN - HOST, NO LIE: So Elon Musk's honeymoon in the Trump administration seems to have ended before the administration has officially begun. While most of us were celebrating the holidays, Elon's been waging a fight with the very people whose voices he spent months elevating. So he's been publicly advocating for offering more visas to highly skilled foreign workers via the H1-B program. And he tweeted, "I am referring to bringing in, via legal immigration, the top 0. 1 percent of engineering talent as being essential for America to keep winning. The number of people who are super talented engineers and super motivated in the USA is far too low. Think of this like a pro sports team. If you want your team to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be. That enables the whole team to win." And he was backed up by his Department of Government Efficiency co-chair, Vivek Ramaswamy, who tweeted, "A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers." [00:24:00]

Well, I'm sure you can imagine how that went over with Trump's 'America First' base. Matt Gaetz, for example, tweeted, "We welcomed the tech bros when they came running our way to avoid the third grade teacher picking their kids gender, and the obvious Biden/Harris economic decline. We did not ask them to engineer an immigration policy."

He was joined by Ann Coulter, who tweeted, "American workers can leave a company, imported H1-B workers can't. Tech wants indentured servants, not high skilled workers." Laura Loomer, who would ultimately have her Twitter verification stripped away by Elon over this very argument, wrote, "Vivek Ramaswamy knows that the Great Replacement is real, so does J.D. Vance. It's not racist against Indians to want the original MAGA policies I voted for. I voted for a reduction in H1-B visas, not an extension. And I would happily say it to their faces because there's nothing inflammatory about what I said. Everything I said is true. If India was so high skilled people would stay there instead of flocking to the U.S., you're not going to shame me into tempering my thoughts. I really am past the point of giving a fuck. The tech billionaires don't get to just walk inside Mar a Lago and stroke their massive checkbooks and rewrite our immigration policy so they can have [00:25:00] unlimited slave laborers from India and China who never assimilate."

And so then, Elon started clapping back, tweeting stuff like this, quote, "The reason I'm in America, along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla, and hundreds of other companies that made America strong, is because of H1-B. Take a step back and fuck yourself in the face. I will go to war on this issue, the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend ."To which Steve Bannon replied, "Someone please notify Child Protective Services. Need to do a wellness check on this toddler."

And this was all just a tiny sampling of the hundreds of tweets that consumed Twitter over the holiday on this very topic. Now, first of all, just as a quick aside, imagine being the richest person on the planet. You can quite literally do anything on Earth and you spend the holidays fighting with random racists on Twitter, whose voices you elevated, by the way? Like, if you ever needed to disabuse yourself of this notion that money buys happiness, all you gotta do is look at Elon Musk, because my god, this dude really does have a pathetic existence.

Also, this is what you spend Christmas doing? Aren't you part of the administration whose entire M.O. is that Trump is [00:26:00] bringing Christmas back? Those evil communist Marxist Democrats stole Christmas from the department stores, and yet now Trump is entering office, and you spend that sacred holiday fighting with strangers on the internet?

This is what we brought Christmas back for? Okay, but Elon's sad little holiday aside, the broader irony here is that Elon paid hundreds of millions of dollars to help Trump, who ran on a xenophobic platform of deporting immigrants, win the presidency. And yet now he can't understand why the rabid base of unrepentant racists that he emboldened continues to be racist?

'Man votes for Leopards Eating Faces Party did not think leopards would eat his face too.' And look, of course all of this is a hill that Elon will die on. He's a former H1-B visa immigrant who owns businesses that I'm sure largely rely on H1-B visa recipients to function. It's also a hill that the MAGA faithful will die on, though.

Trump's agenda is America First, and his campaign handed out Deport Them All signs at his rallies. And so look, my take on this is that they both got fooled. The MAGA loyalists probably took it worse, recognizing now that they just installed into power an unelected oligarch [00:27:00] who's going to use Donald Trump to expand immigration programs that they hate, and there's probably nothing they can do about it, because if Elon is the de facto president, but Elon is also a sad little man who desperately craves the approval of the MAGA base that he has spent the better part of a year nurturing.

He needs them to keep petting him and massaging his ego, and now he's recognizing that his little foot soldiers are just racist assholes who are happy to accept the financial help, but don't actually agree with his worldview and instead want to elevate white Americans and no one else. So not great for either side.

Now, it goes without saying, but the H1-B program is good. We should absolutely bring the best and the brightest talent to the United States, and if they don't come here, the talent goes to other countries. There is actually a 100% quote unquote America First incentive to do that. Now, of course, MAGA doesn't care, because for them it's more about promoting white Americans than actually helping America as a whole.

The irony of all of this, though, is that Democrats understand this, but Elon decided to throw his lot in with the deport them all guy and just hope that everything would work out from there. If Elon is looking for the party that would [00:28:00] actually embrace and welcome high skilled labor from other countries, that would be the party that he himself helped ensure would be shut out of power.

But hey, I'm sure it's gonna be plenty easy convincing Steve Bannon and Matt Gaetz that suddenly immigration is good.

Elon & Vivek's H1-B Crash Out - Bad Faith - Air Date 1-2-25

BRIAHNA JOY GRAY - HOST, BAD FAITH: So just to step back for a second, for people who aren't aware of what H1-B visas are, they are visas that are extended generally to tech companies use them more, PMC class, I guess you could frame it, visas to get foreign workers into the United States of America. And the question is, one of the central questions that I think there's a lot of debate on, is whether or not there's an actual need. So we've framed this up as a, you know, do you care more about kind of industry and the ability for a company like Tesla to grow and get the workers that it needs because there is ostensibly a deficit of U. S. workers that can do this job? Or do you care more about just kind of a protectionist attitude in preserving the job opportunities for American workers? But people have been making the case that that is not in fact really the contours of this debate, namely because there are in fact sufficient U.S. workers to fill these posts that there have been record layoffs in the tech sector over the last year or so. And that in fact, this is [00:29:00] very similar to the broader immigration debate, which understands that allowing sort of open borders has negative implications for the U.S. job market, and this is ultimately a bid to be able to hire lower workers at lower pay who aren't going to go on strike, who aren't going to rabble rouse because they risk being deported from the country.

IRAMI OSEI-FRIMPONG: Yeah, is there a meaningful difference between an illegal immigrant laborer who's undocumented and a guest worker who is documented but is vulnerable? Because one of the major problems for an American worker and an American labor force is that undocumented workers are so vulnerable that they're less likely to organize, they're less likely to demand higher wages, they're less likely to demand better working conditions, they're less likely to raise the floor for what an American worker is.

And that's the same criticism you can land at the guest worker programs, who are also less likely to organize, less likely to demand higher wages, because if they do any of that stuff, and for some reason, and [00:30:00] Netflix is famous for this, they just get fired. Then they end up, like, functionally deported or on borrowed time.

So, that installed vulnerability, as a workforce, is the problem. Not necessarily the legal versus illegal. At least in my view, that's the problem. So maybe we should be talking about, like, getting rid of guest workers, and maybe guest workers is a problem for American democracy. Because the workers are not just workers they're also people and property owners and all of that stuff so we need to talk about what it means to be a guest worker. Because you don't just come over here as a coder. You're also a whole person who buys things and has ideas about things that you might want to share but you can't share because if you get fired you might, because if you tick off your boss, you might get deported. So I think I might have a problem with guest workers.

BRIAHNA JOY GRAY - HOST, BAD FAITH: This is the part what's so interesting about this conversation, I think, because you're getting conservatives who, frankly, oppose the H1-B visa program less because of kind of labor rights issues, but more because of these kind of nativist cultural arguments that get thrown around, many of which are racist, there's been a lot of anti Indian [00:31:00] smearing and slurring happening on the internet, talking about how these workers are coming from an inferior culture, all of this kind of stuff, which has been really revealing on a number of fronts, right?

On one level, there are a bunch of kind of liberals who are eager to point out that Republicans who argue that their concerns about immigration weren't about race, but were in fact about kind of the worthiness of the immigrant have had that sort of exposed by the extent to which these are as worthy quote unquote immigrants as you can get in terms of being highly educated, having jobs, contributing to the economy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but there's still an antipathy for them, apparently, based on them being quote unquote, culturally unfit. At the same time, though, there is a, what's fascinating about this to me is that you have all these conservatives kind of walking up to making what are ostensibly left arguments about the labor interests of American workers. About the use of foreign workers to drive down labor, about how less competitive American workers are because they have student loans and therefore need to be paid higher rates. And the fact that there is this willingness to tip tap right up to the edge of these arguments does sort of start to feel like it's a little [00:32:00] bit of an opportunity for the left here.

Our Moment is Approaching - The Muckrake Political Podcast - Air Date 12-31-24

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: And speaking of the class, and I'm glad we reframed it through this thing. I put out a thing on Substack because I realized that In the wake of the 2024 election, not only has class politics gotten more and more muddled, it's just gotten completely contorted for a variety of reasons, which we'll get into in a little bit.

And actually, what has happened is I actually believe that the tech oligarchs have carried out an incredible run around. Like what is actually occurred is that they have more or less supplanted the wealth class, the donors who created the modern Republican Party, got rid of the regulatory state, destroyed public education, science, and you name it, they have actually captured basically all the means of production in the country.

There's not a corporation, there's not a business that doesn't use their tools at this point that doesn't then feed into them and give them more and more historical wealth, which is now going to even fracture the class system even further. I [00:33:00] call them the burger class because basically the burger class, the Trump supporters who have the private jets and the boats, they, you know, basically you've got your regional used car lot magnates, right?, who used to basically run the country. And they have been alienated from power, they've been supplanted by the wealth class, who are people like your Kochs, who have these major international corporations and have closeness to energy manufacturing, basically everything, and they've controlled politics now for decades.

The tech class has now climbed above them. And they're pushing the wealth class down underneath them. They'll be fine. Like, those people who have hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe even touch around the billion, couple of billion dollar mark, they're going to be totally fine. But everybody down that ladder is going to get crushed over the next few years.

And I don't actually, and, It's actually funny, Carl, because I think there are parallel structures within both parties. The Democratic Party has a [00:34:00] base that yells at them constantly. They've been told that they're wrong and that they're going to cost them elections. And meanwhile, they've, worked hand in hand with the wealth class in order to carry out their agenda.

The Republican Party has been now even more compacted with the tech class, which recognized that the Republican Party and right wing, nationalistic, racist, White supremacist groups around the world are their best chance to finalize their takeover of governments and the economies and to go ahead and extract the resources that they need to further their products and their agendas into the future.

And so what you have is the vast majority of Americans have no idea what the fuck is going on. They have no idea how politics actually works. And the MAGA people are now going to get a hard lesson in this. But, and the problem is here, and this is something we're going to have to work against if we're going to defeat them, they have built in cognitive dissonance machines. They have everything from their media to their conspiracy theories to their delusions, you name it. That's what's going to blame the deep state and conspiracy theories and woke and all of that for all the economic travails. [00:35:00] And meanwhile, it's going to elevate people like Musk to become the first trillionaires and have widespread, probably international power over politics and economies. And so meanwhile, underneath them, you have a lot of other people who are just being controlled or basically being disenfranchised. And I think we're watching that in real time at this point.

KARL FOLK: Yes, I think, what's been interesting is seeing all of this, right? Like this huge gearing up for the plundering of the American public. And at the same time, we have stuff like the assassination of a UnitedHealthcare exec. And it's polling better than both political parties. And so, we're set up right now in such a way where people know or have a feeling that something's amiss here, right? As someone who is a glutton for punishment and I'm trying to understand the far right a little bit better, you know, [00:36:00] I perused the comment section of terrible people on social media and on YouTube and I'm sure a lot of people who listen to this saw some of the screencaps coming from places like Ben Shapiro.

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Oh, Ben Shapiro's audience is on board.

KARL FOLK: Yeah, well, and that's the thing, this is where Bannon understands the game better than the rest of the write, is he knows that that anger is very real...

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: incredibly real.

KARL FOLK: And it's very much an onion skin beneath the surface. And he can see the same thing that I think a lot of us see, which is this cabinet of billionaires and a White House that is being designed by billionaires for billionaires, there are only two routes here. And that's actually a problem for the far right.

They need a multiple option kind of buffet of ways that they can turn when things go poorly. And You can't really [00:37:00] turn on the wealth class now for them in any fundamental way. And the reality is most people are on board with doing so much better with our economic situation that they're not at all against a targeted assassination.

Which these are huge shifts. These are historic shifts in America's trajectory socially. And they're being coupled with this massive, like I said, getting ready phase for the plundering and those two things together are shocking, right? this is something this country hasn't seen in 120, 110 years, where you have like actions against the wealthy on the street. And then you have the rise of this authoritarian sect of capital. That's not just like, Oh, we're going to be authoritarian, but like, Thank you for playing, but now it's all ours. And that, [00:38:00] we haven't had a makeup like this in, a long time. So we're really setting ourselves up here for a couple of huge fights at the same time that sit side by side, but aren't going to be the same fight.

And I've been talking with people recently about how we are actually going to have to navigate both. Incredibly rough fascist politics. And the fact that they are going to start to lose support at a rate that's almost unimaginable once some of these things start to hit. And we're gonna have to be forward thinking enough, let's say, to go and pick some of these people up and say, Look, we all got the short end of a stick here.

You voted for a fascist. This is what we were trying to tell you about. But we also Are going to have to figure out how to get you and me and everyone else out of this hole now And that's not going to happen Without [00:39:00] us figuring out how to do that together And I think you know i've been watching this and saying okay This is going to be really tough, but we might also actually have a chance here to change the direction again. Because people do understand, like this is a class problem not a race or gender problem. And The people who were stuck in those information silos with the far right, in some cases, are starting to say, hold up, this is a problem.

This isn't the direction to solve that problem. This is the direction to keep us from actually dealing with it. And, you see that now in comment sections where prior to the assassination and prior to Trump's winning and then lining that with the White House cabinet with billionaires, just wasn't there.

Weekly Roundup Jimmy Carter vs Elon Musk - Straight White American Jesus - Air Date 1-3-25

BRAD ONISHI - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: All right, Dan in my book, I do discuss Carter quite a bit. And one of the dates that you threw out there was 1980. It's a sore point [00:40:00] for me, Dan. And I just want to address it so that we don't have any issues later. You said it was a long time ago. It happens to be the year I was born. So, I'm just going to try to,

DANIEL MILLER - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: I'm just doing a math. Yeah.

BRAD ONISHI - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: I just had my birthday and I'm feeling a little older, but that's fine. 1980 is also the year Ronald Reagan wins the White House and Jimmy Carter becomes a one term president. Most of you listening know the story: the religious right sided with Ronald Reagan. And I want to just read a bit of what I wrote about all of this that did not make it into the book. This is stuff that was on the cutting room floor. So here we go. "In retrospect, the evangelical breakup with Jimmy Carter was the result of a number of complex issues, but all the details lead back to a central theme.

Though Carter was one of them, his policies didn't fit their agenda. His faith was unquestionable. He was born and raised a Southern Baptist, served as a missionary, supported his church at every turn, and married his one and only love. Carter's politics, on the other hand, were not aligned with the vision that Paul Weyrich and Jerry Falwell and others had for the United States. They felt he didn't represent the power of the nation." [00:41:00]

I just want to stop and say one of the things that dogged Carter as president is that people like Jerry Falwell and other warmongers, labeled him as not manly enough. He was he was a man who listened, a man who wanted diplomacy, a man who wasn't always talking about control and violence and nuclear weapons. It's in the same ways that Obama was labeled this guy who wears mom jeans and that whole thing. it's very similar.

"In essence, Carter was Christian enough, but not nationalist or patriarchal or warmongering enough to satisfy other Christians. The man who embodied family values was characterized as hating the traditional family. The man who was an officer in the Navy was castigated as unpatriotic when it came to foreign policy. He brought the cross into the white house, but according to his critics, he left the flag outside of the sanctuary. So in 1980, Christian conservatives supported a divorced Hollywood actor with a mixed record on issues surrounding quote, "family values" and a history of supporting abortion over the Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher who married his high school sweetheart, served with distinction in the armed forces, and often brought his Bible with him when leaving the house.

It was the election that made clear that the cross [00:42:00] wasn't enough for Christian nationalists. The cross must always be accompanied by the flag. This leads to one final lesson to be learned from the Carter/Reagan election. When it came to voting for Donald Trump, Christian nationalists had precedent for prioritizing politics over morals and policies over identity. Jimmy Carter was born to a poor family in a tiny town in rural Georgia. Donald Trump was born to a rich real estate magnate in New York City. Jimmy Carter was a dyed in the wool evangelical from the time he left the womb, was baptized as a teenager, and committed himself to Jesus Christ wholeheartedly.

Throughout his life, Donald Trump has rarely attended church, and to this day, he is religiously illiterate. Jimmy Carter joined the Navy and became an officer. Donald Trump avoided the draft in Vietnam because he claimed he had bone spurs. Jimmy Carter's father, Mr. Earl, as they called him, was a pillar of his community who helped out his neighbors in ways that would only go noticed after his death.

Donald Trump's father, Fred Trump, was arrested after a KKK rally in the late 1920s. In 1963, Jimmy Carter ran to be part of the Georgia State [00:43:00] Legislature, in part to prevent segregationists from shutting down Georgia schools after the 1954 Brown v. Board Supreme Court decision. In 1989, Donald Trump took out a full page ad in the New York Press decrying the Central Park Five and calling for the death penalty.

They were later exonerated, of course. Jimmy Carter built his presidential campaign out of the conceptions of justice inspired by the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and his friend Bob Dylan, / Timothy Chalamet. Donald Trump modeling himself after Andrew, modeled himself after Andrew Jackson." Dan thinks that's so funny.

DANIEL MILLER - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: I Wasn't expecting that. Sorry, I didn't mean to break in there.

BRAD ONISHI - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: "Jimmy Carter appointed more people of color and women to the federal judiciary than any other president before him. Trump employed open white nationalists in his cabinet, including Stephen Biller, Steve Bannon, and Stephen Miller. When Jimmy Carter became president, he put his peanut farm in a blind trust, giving him control of his financial portfolio. As President Trump used his power to promote and grow his various businesses across the world. When Carter left the White House, he [00:44:00] was badly in debt because those who had managed his blind trust had done so poorly. By the time Donald Trump left the White House, his children earned nearly a billion dollars of private income while he was in office, not to mention Jared Kushner's deal for multi billions after Trump left office.

After leaving office, Jimmy Carter helped to build 4, 000 houses for those in need through programs related to Habitat for Humanity. Since the end of his presidency, Trump has lived at the private golf resort he owns in Florida."

One of the things I'll just say, and I want to really launch us into Musk and Trump and all that is, Jimmy Carter was also, Dan, in some ways, the last middle class president.

So, we might get an email here or two about Obama, and that's fair. But the Bush family, the Reagan family, no. Not even close. Okay? The Trump family, no, he's a fake billionaire, but still he's lived a life of upper class luxury for his entire existence. The Obamas, when they entered the White House, yes, I think were middle class, and I think you [00:45:00] could, I think you could probably say that Obama and Carter came from the same kind of class background in some ways.

But, what I'll add to that though, and of course, the Obamas being black I'm not going to overlook what the economic challenges that this country has posed to black Americans at every turn. Whether it's enslavement, Jim Crow, redlining, and so on. So, not overlooking any of that when it comes to the Obamas.

Jimmy Carter was born on a farm. I mean, he was the first president born in a hospital, but he was a farmer, Dan. That, I mean, Tim Walz, I think was notable for a lot of, for a lot of us, because he came off as this, like, regular guy, a teacher, a military guy, a dad, go out and fix your car, go out and go hunting for turkey. I think a lot of people found Tim Walz endearing because he felt like somebody they might know. Jimmy Carter was one of those people, and you cannot even imagine that. Now, I mean, the Clintons I, come on, by the time Hillary Clinton ran, they were, they were millionaires a hundred times over.

So, I think that's there. Anything else on Carter before we go to some contemporary stuff here with [00:46:00] Musk and Trump and everybody else?

DANIEL MILLER - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: I think to echo your point about not, I have nothing but respect for the achievements of the Obamas, but you also have like, was at University of Chicago educated Barack Obama, I think it's another contrast even between, somebody like Carter.

BRAD ONISHI - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: Well, ivy league law education.

DANIEL MILLER - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: So I just to make that point is I think to reinforce that, that, If you wanted, some sort of middle class credentials now, like, I think you'd be really hard pressed to find anybody who could have fit that better than somebody like Carter.

BRAD ONISHI - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: Well, and this whole idea of class and money and corruption and, the guy put his family's peanut farm in a trust and the whole time he's president, he's like, don't tell me about it. I don't, I legally don't want to know about it. And when he gets out, it's like he's in debt. So I've said this before in the show, Dan, can you imagine being president and you lose and you're like, well, got to leave the white house and take my solar panels with me.

The Oligarch Class - Left Anchor - Air Date 1-3-25

ALEXI THE GREEK - CO-HOST, LEFT ANCHOR: Maybe we should shift to some of the solutions here, because I think we're juxtaposing these private individuals who are lionized and debauched and all these things, and it's been this [00:47:00] way for so long, how do we reverse that course? I mean, we've talked about feudalism. Some people think maybe this is neo feudalism. What's your analysis in the book about the path to reverse this kind of inequality and change the ruling class to rule by the people? That's a small question.

PROF ROB LARSON: Yeah, I know the answers to all these questions. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot that we can see would work because it works historically, which is a good start. Like, we did have for many years in the past, a New Deal, Great Society period that did accomplish a lot.

It had like reforms that are not necessarily reformist, like little gestures and crumbs to keep the working class from rebelling, but reforms that make it easier, or not necessarily easier, but kind of prepare the way for more like real activism or organization. So things like, take something obvious, like the National Labor Relations Act that creates the NLRB that they're always trying to get rid of these days, but gives workers, plenty of limited and boss-favoring tools as well.

But several real allowances that any [00:48:00] local or union organizer will tell you are incredibly important. I'm my union local's council rep. So I can tell you these things really matter. And things like the minimum wage and the Civil Rights Act and voting rights, I think like lots of real, real achievements there that are like very positive and very constructive for us, but at the same time, I would say like those things also left the main thing intact, which is private ownership of resources and capital, you know? So for like broad, it's at the broadest level, how we try to deal with or you know, begin to address getting out of this kind of condition that we're in, with incredible, just incredible wealth in the US certainly, and globally, and just no one can have any of it, except the already spoiledest, completely diluted ruling class goons.

I mean, there's things that worked historically. We got those gains historically through a big fat labor movement. Reagan and Clinton really killed labor in the US along with a million decisions by corporate investment boards, the ruling class of capital. People who decide "We're going to close down all the factories in this country and put them in this country, unless you give us 50 prizes." Like that's, that's like a major change, and that kind of hurt labor enormously, giving capital global mobility, but [00:49:00] certainly not labor. "We can't have you f f f f f foreigners coming in here and doing jobs. We're just gonna bitch about there not being any workers. No one wants to work anymore." "We will work, señor." "F f f f ugh! Foreign People!" It's amazing to watch that response, but like labor could be rebuilt.

We have like a modest labor renaissance happening now. We should push that as hard as we possibly can. A couple of hundred organized Starbucks stores, maybe not recognized with contracts yet, but that organization is the beginning. Recent victories for the UAW in, like, southern auto plants, which is about some of the worst territory you could be organizing in. Tiny amounts of victories against Amazon. Microsoft has collective bargaining units because it's bought up a bunch of gaming studios. These things, like, are existing, and you still have a lot of organization in some sectors, like in the railroads, in construction the public sector, where I work.

So these things exist. That's important. We should try to get back to where we were at least before when union density peaked in 1953 at around a third of the workforce under collective bargaining agreements. It'd be great to get back to those days and indeed exceed them. We also need something that goes beyond just, organizing for better pay [00:50:00] and vacation days and health insurance. As important as that stuff obviously is. And that's where it's great to get actual, like, socialist, nationally visible political representation. Which, for I can only tell young people trying to help move socialism forward today, if you think this is a terrible era, you should have tried before 2016 when I mean, like, "Oh, socialist, what have you done since the Berlin Wall fell?" Just like, aging, boomer, instant put downs, ignoring anything you say after that, no matter how popular your socialist ideas are, from reforms like Medicare for all, all the way up to, like, much more broad measures, but having people like The Squad, at least those who have survived the AIPAC shooting gallery lately. Or Sanders himself, of course.

Like, these people have put left wing and even really socialist ideas in front of the national public and back in the conversation again, which is on its own a huge contribution beyond what they've been able to influence in legislation, which, exists but is debatable. So to me a much stronger labor movement, visible and real socialist representation would be the things we need. But to me, the real thing that we would want to do this time that never happened before is [00:51:00] expropriation of capital is all it is. I would say that's where the liberal or social democracy line is drawn between that and like democratic socialism or like real more radical ideas. Fundamentally, the New Deal and Great Society in the US and the big social democratic welfare states, which went well beyond what we did in Northern and Western Europe.

Real achievements there. People don't want to give up their national health insurance. I wish we had gotten it, so like real valuable things there that people love. But they left, with a few exceptions, like other than health specifically, transportation, and energy in a few countries. Other than those, and things like ports, other than those, private property remained private property.

Might be regulated a lot during that period. Lot higher taxes, no doubt. But it's your oil refinery. It's your giant tractor plant, it's your huge agricultural estate. Most of the time antitrust doesn't require you to break it up just because you're big, you have to be proven to be monopolizing, it's a lot more specific. I've been writing about all these antitrust cases on tech for Jacobin. It's interesting, fingers crossed, [00:52:00] Google's a monopolist, that's what happened with Microsoft.

On the other hand, Microsoft beat getting broken up and is the biggest company in the world today, so who can tell if that will work? But the point is, those huge fortunes and the physical capital assets remained in the hands of the corporate world and the ruling class that owns their stock. And that's why they were in a position, eventually, in the 70s and especially 80s and 90s, to mount that neoliberal attack on us and use their ownership of media to give us a bunch of right wing ideas for the Republicans and Democrats to adopt. They were able to move their capital overseas when NAFTA kind of opened up, and increasing telecommunication power opened up the doors for doing that. Like, we left them in charge of economic assets and investment fundamentally. Despite the significant and real regulations and like public planning that existed to an extent in these countries.

And they were able to come back with it. Like, we never ultimately took their main source of power in their hand. We said, "You can keep your ring, Sauron, but you better be good." He's like, "Oh, totally." For 30 years, until the labor movement's tired, and people are sick of 70s inflation, and you can roll in a handsome actor who says, "All this happened because we [00:53:00] chained up poor Sauron. We should let him use his ring more freely." And now, back in charge. So, unless, next time we have a socialist movement, just throw the damn ring into the lava so we can have some freedom this time. It's definitely a concrete piece of advice that's very helpful that I'm giving, so you won't regret it.

Note from the Editor on the rehashing of the anti-democratic argument for extreme wealth for the benefit of humanity

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips starting with The Reidout laying out the history of right-wing influencers from Limbaugh to Musk. Democracy Now! looked at the impact of growing up in apartheid South Africa on Elon Musk. The Muckrake Political Podcast examined Musk's impact on the Republican Party through campaign finance threats. Brian Tyler Cohen on No Lie looked at the MAGA civil war over H-1B visas for skilled workers the tech lords want for their companies. Bad Faith continued the discussion on H-1B visas. The Muckrake Political Podcast looked at the big picture of the wealth classes influencing politics. Straight White American Jesus contrasted Jimmy Carter with Donald Trump. And Left Anchor zoomed out even further to discuss the historical context of inequality [00:54:00] and the shortcomings of past efforts to combat it.

And those were just the top takes. There's a lot more in the deeper dive sections. But first, a reminder that this show is produced with the support of our members who get access to bonus episodes and enjoy all of our shows without ads. To support all of our work and have those bonus episodes delivered seamlessly to the new members only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show at bestoftheleft.com/support. There's a link in the show notes, through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple podcast app. And, as always, if regular membership isn't in the cards for you, shoot me an email requesting a financial hardship membership, because we don't let a lack of funds stand in the way of hearing more information.

And recently we've been trying something new, offering you the opportunity to submit your comments and questions for upcoming topics, not just current and past ones, so I can give you a heads up on what's coming. Next up, we're working on the topic of the legacy of Jimmy Carter with a focus on where things currently stand on some of his top issues like environmentalism, housing for the [00:55:00] poor, and so on. Then we're also going to be tackling an idea that I think will be new for a lot of people, which is the de-alignment of working people with the left, driven by the impact of neo-liberalism as well as the tentative realignment of the right to include a bit more economic populism, At least among their supporters, if not their actual politicians and policies, as we have seen play out. And finally, we will definitely be tackling the LA fires and the broader interplay between fire and water in the age of climate change. So, get your comments or questions in now for those topics. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at 202-999-399 1, or simply email me to [email protected].

Now, as for today's topic, it just so happens that The Daily podcast from The New York Times took up this issue of Silicon Valley and Trump this week. So. I had a listen. Turns out their focus was on Marc Andreessen, another [00:56:00] high profile tech billionaire. He's slightly less high profile than others. But anyway, you know, he's one of the guys who switched over from being a sort of moderate Democrat. to a Trump supporter. And one of his big ideas is what he calls "the deal". And the basic "deal" he proposes is that taxes and regulation should be stripped down to the minimum to allow for super wealthy people to do great things with their wealth, which will benefit all.

Now, it's unclear, but it seems like he doesn't often or maybe ever mention that Andrew Carnegie propose d basically the exact same idea in the late 1800s. So, this is nothing new. The difference between the two, maybe that Carnegie's idea was that great wealth should be accumulated and then given away in the form of philanthropy, which is how we got thousands of Carnegie libraries around the world, as well as Carnegie Hall and untold numbers of other things that stemmed from Carnegie foundations. Andreessen's [00:57:00] idea seems to be a lot less about philanthropy and a lot more about simply using wealth to build tech companies because tech companies themselves are such a great benefit to society that it's basically like philanthropy. It's like, we're doing capitalism and getting extremely wealthy, but the work we're doing is for everyone and it's all good. That seems to be his idea. So, the end goal of benefiting humanity is the same, but the path is different for these two.

Given those two ideas you may be thinking well, you know, I guess Jay probably prefers the Carnegie method of actually spreading wealth around than just building ever more tech companies and simply framing your wealth accumulation as inherently good for humanity. And, yeah, maybe, I guess,

But really, the answer is, that's the wrong question. And both ideas are bullshit. Andrew Carnegie famously laid out his idea in an essay titled "The Gospel of Wealth". And within the very first paragraph, he falls into multiple [00:58:00] logical fallacies and presents multiple painfully flimsy arguments. So, talking about the technological progress over the past few hundred years leading up to the late 1800s, Carnegie says, "But contrast between the palace of the millionaire and the cottage of the laborer with us today measures the change which has come with civilization. This change, however, is not to be deplored, but welcomed as highly beneficial. It is well, nay, essential for the progress of the race that the houses have some should be homes for all that is highest and best in literature and the arts and for all the refinements of civilization, rather than that none should be so. Much better, this great irregularity, than universal squalor".

Okay. Let me stop you right there. This [00:59:00] either/or framing is a classic misdirection that artificially limits the scope of the debate and the discussion, and even the imagination of where people go in their minds when they think about ideas like wealth inequality. This, Do you want for there to be untold inequality and have arts and literature, or Would you prefer that there be no culture at all, and for literally everyone to live in squalor? That is absurd. Ridiculous. Those are not the options.

And then his next line caused me to have to do a little bit of research. He says, "Without wealth, there can be no Maecenas" I'm like, okay, what or who is Maecenas. I was not familiar with that. So I did a deep dive by reading the first paragraph of Wikipedia, which says "Gaius Maecenas who lived from about 68 BCE to 8 BCE"—just barely missed Jesus; [01:00:00] shucks!—this man was "an important patron for the new generation Augustan poets, including both Horace and Virgil. In many languages, his name is an eponym for 'patron of arts'... During the reign of Augustus, Maecenas served as a quasi-culture minister to the Roman Emperor".

So, Carnegie's point is that only by being wealthy was Maecenas able to patronize artists so that they could create their great works, which we still appreciate today. But as I've already pointed out, that's an artificially narrowed perspective that precludes other possibilities of how society might be organized. So, it's true that Maecenas' being rich allowed him to patronize the arts. But it doesn't mean that in order for the arts to be patronized, there must be obscenely rich people. That is another logical fallacy.

And highlighting any benefit that is created by the wealth of these [01:01:00] kinds of oligarchs, again, narrowly focuses the discussion. It becomes a question about the outcome of the patronage rather than a discussion or debate about how things might otherwise be organized compared to the wealthy philanthropy patronage system.

To start at the most basic unit of wealth accumulation, it is always built on the exploitation of laborers. So that always needs to be calculated in. People died in Carnegie's steel mills and he hired the Pinkertons, basically a private army, to break up efforts to unionize. And then today we think of tech workers as nerds making six figures while living in the Bay area in California. But the subcontracting that supports those big tech companies are often built on people all around the world, living in grinding poverty, while doing profoundly menial but essential tasks that those companies require in order to provide the services that they do. So the difference between now and 130 years [01:02:00] ago in terms of labor is not actually as stark as you'd imagine. But look, I'm sure the oligarchs would wave that away and just say, well, you know, Those are the eggs you need to break to make omelet.

So fine. You can't force people to care about the humanity of others. So forgetting for a moment those who suffer directly for the accumulation of wealth by the very few, the bigger issue is how philanthropy in almost every form bypasses the democratic process and robs people of the ability to have a say in how society is impacted by those flows of enormous wealth.

It's an inherently paternalistic mindset that sees the wealthy as uniquely qualified to make decisions that will impact everyone without the legitimacy that comes from being elected or having ideas run through a democratic process of debate. And you don't have to cast aspersions on any particular rich person and say they are going to make the wrong decision. You just have to understand the effects on the whole. [01:03:00]

And it's easy to understand that philanthropy in general, and with very few exceptions. Is given in a way that may sort of soften the edges of society, shave off some of the sharp corners that are particularly objectionable. But philanthropy never truly challenges the status quo, no matter how much public support there is for change. There's a reason why rich people are far more likely to patronize the arts ban support the establishment of universal workers' rights or healthcare, widely popular ideas that would also help everyone.

So, if the idea is to help everyone, you would think, Oh they should be in favor of, you know, directly helping everyone. But that's not how philanthropy works. Even though some good can unquestionably come from philanthropy. It is also. Basically just another way of artificially narrowing the scope, but not just of a debate or a discussion, but in how society can choose [01:04:00] to shape itself. It's been described as a sort of benevolent authoritarianism with the rich deciding what's best for everyone else and saying in effect. Trust us. We know what's good for you.

Now to wrap up, I'll mention that the only alternative is not necessarily taxation and spending through government appropriations. The Best of the Left producers had a discussion on our show for members that will be coming out soon about the benefits of citizen councils that bring together a random, but representative group of people to help sort through options and make decisions. These can be used to propose solutions to a particular problem that an elected council wants to address. But they can and have been used to help decide how to distribute large sums of money from the private sector, just a rich person who wants to give their money away, but doesn't want to be in charge of it themselves. Doesn't want to do it in a paternalistic way, wants to give a democratic process the option to give that money away.

So that's just one [01:05:00] small idea of how wealth could be managed slightly differently. Of course, we could have a bigger discussion about avoiding having wealth accumulated in such vast sums to begin with. But in short, the big idea is don't be fooled into allowing our options of how to design society to be narrowed by the whims of the ultra wealthy. There are other options that we can imagine, if we just widen out our perspective.

SECTION A: OLIGARCHS

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now. We'll continue to dive deeper on four topics. Next up section a. The oligarchs followed by section B, the maca fracture. Section C global influence and section D organizing.

The Oligarch Class Part 2 - Left Anchor - Air Date 1-3-25

ALEXI THE GREEK - CO-HOST, LEFT ANCHOR: You know, it might be a good place, since we're talking about that, because you have such a nice, simple definition of capitalism and socialism, and I'm sure we'll get to the plan at the end to combat all the ills and evils of these nasty characters and what they've done over history. But speaking of productive wealth maybe you could distinguish between productive property versus as you say, petty [01:06:00] private or personal property, and why that distinction matters so much for growing inequality and for the political and economic social power.

PROF ROB LARSON: Yeah. That's a great one, man. Definitely. When you talk to people who are in the political mainstream, people who are more conservative or more liberal, they're going to refer to socialism in scary terms, and they'll refer to it as being tyrannical, which is kind of funny, if you look at the history of it. But primarily the first thing that conservatives always refer to is like, oh, you know, socialists, they're coming and they're going to take my gun and my truck and my gas burning stove. They're going to come and take my pants and my pets and my toothbrush. Like, no one wants your petty personal property.

ALEXI THE GREEK - CO-HOST, LEFT ANCHOR: They're going to come for your truck nuts. They're going to take your

PROF ROB LARSON: Should we connect? Literally castrating the working class. Yeah, it's about productive wealth that we usually talk about. I mean, your personal money, your little petty middle class house and cars. I mean, you're drawing on social services. You should [01:07:00] pay a tax assessment to fund those. I mean, sure. But this is not like the wealth of society. When we talk about "socializing the means of production" or "nationalizing capital," we're talking about those big pieces of productive capital that we talked about, that I mentioned a moment ago, again, like housing stock is kind of intermediate.

Usually a lot of socialists like to draw the line at expropriating your second home and up. But if, you're working on your mortgage on your home, I mean, you paid for it with your actual working class labor. That's not where the, it's not because you have a personal house or condo unit that the working class is oppressed.

It's because we have tiny ownership of all the productive capital of society. And it puts those owners in a position to decide who gets a job or not. It's like, that's a real distinction. And that's very different from, well, if there's, if Bernie is president, is he going to take away my Xbox? You know, he won't. It's not, it's productive property we care about. That's the important thing. And just to kind of connect it to Ryan's first question about wealth because I just feel this one point is so important. So I'm always kind of lunging to make it. One thing I mentioned in the chapter on the [01:08:00] wealth itself and the numbers in the book is again, we talk about different kinds of wealth and owning it.

The main thing that makes up the giant fortunes of the real high end of the wealth distribution and the ruling class, as it were, it's financial assets. And that includes things like bonds and, every kind of financial tool from, derivatives to futures contracts to everything else, but the big thing is ownership of that corporate property. That big capital we mentioned, and we should just mention that the oil refineries, the data centers, those things belong to Corporate America, they're corporate property, they belong to Microsoft or Chevron or whichever.

Well, those corporations and, we on the left or have a long history of being skeptical of these powerful corporations and their incredible ability to control political events and so on. We should just recognize too, though, that those corporate empires have owners. They belong to their (sarcastically) "equity investors," their shareholders and shareholders are very tightly concentrated across the economy.

So, whereas [01:09:00] if I can just turn to some wealth data here. All the data I'm referring to here is from the WID, the Wealth Inequality Database, which is a great resource that everyone listening should check out. You can pull up the World Inequality Database. It includes all of your hotshot economists who study the wealth gap, Piketty, Zuckerman, Saez. If you know who I'm talking about, you'll be very excited. If not, that's okay. Very good data visualizations. See the share of income held by the rich versus like the bottom 50 percent and they have that distribution visualized for your convenience for almost every individual country in the world. So you can pull up like Algeria, or South Africa, or Bolivia, or Canada's wealth or income distributions over time. Pretty cool. So I just want to plug them since I'm stealing all of their work.

So they found that the US in 2021, last year we had numbers for, the wealthiest 1% of households owned about 35% of wealth. Which is an outrageous crime against a human spirit, [01:10:00] so that's bad. However, I would point out, that richest- that same richest 1% of households owns 40% of all stock, of all that corporate equity. And those traded stock assets, 40%. And the richest 10% of households own 84% of it, like most of it. Now if you're like some, "professional class" person like myself, a community college professor, you may have a full time job that may come with a tax advantaged retirement vehicle of some type, mine does.

And when you sign up for the job, you get a little retirement plan and you pick basically a mutual fund. Which a mutual fund, you can buy shares in a fund and they own shares of companies. So it's shares of something real. This is what finance is all about. If you're excited by this, you should go into finance, listeners.

But the point is, all that big capital and productive wealth we're talking about, it's corporate property. Of this same ruling class, that's all. I just feel like sometimes people don't [01:11:00] necessarily have that connection between the super rich households and billionaires and the giant global corporate empires that they disproportionately own. People like me may own little shreds of stocks, and I have a, modest little retirement plan there, but it's a minority of households, and we certainly own a strong minority of the stocks. So I just want to mention that we talk about petty property. Petty property's important. Your comforts of life.

The productive property is represented by ownership of an investment portfolio and representing a bunch of real productive wealth. So I think that's the distinction people should see. Are we talking about your personal wardrobe in your closet or this portfolio that means you own half of South Africa? Like, that's a real distinction.

Zuckerberg Stops Licking And Puts Trump's Entire Boot In His Mouth - The Majority Report - Air Date 1-7-24

CLIP MARK ZUCKERBERG: Hey everyone. I want to talk about something important today, because it's time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram. I started building social media to give people a voice. I gave a speech at Georgetown five years ago about the importance of protecting free expression, and I still believe this today.

But a lot has happened over [01:12:00] the last several years. There's been widespread debate about potential harms from online content. Governments and legacy media have pushed to censor more and more. A lot of this is clearly political, but there's also a lot of legitimately bad stuff out there. Drugs, terrorism, child exploitation.

These are things that we take very seriously, and I want to make sure that we handle responsibly. So we built a lot of complex systems to moderate content. But the problem with complex systems is they make mistakes. Even if they accidentally censor just 1 percent of posts, that's millions of people. And we've reached a point where it's just too many mistakes and too much censorship.

SAM SEDER - HOST, MAJORITY REPORT: Pause it one second. All right. The one thing, and this is maybe a little bit tangential, but this is always there with this. These conversations understand when he talks about these complex systems, creating mistakes, et cetera, et cetera, it is because they do not want to hire. Human beings who could do [01:13:00] this on the regular basis because the number of human beings they would have to hire would inhibit their profitability and make it harder for him to become chasing after the wealthiest man in the world.

EMMA VIGELAND - C0-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And what he borrowed from Elon Musk was also that labor model. Like, Elon came into Twitter and he fired a bunch of folks. And you know what Meta did, uh, just a few months ago? They laid off a lot of people, too. They're copying the community notes thing. Like, we made fun of how incompetent Elon Musk is, but the reality is, is he's making a lot of money and he's trying to make sure that he's as profitable as possible.

This is what the board of directors at Facebook is going to say like, Hey, let's, let's, let's take some of that stuff too.

SAM SEDER - HOST, MAJORITY REPORT: I don't think that's what I, because frankly, Musk is not making a dime on Twitter. It is a complete loss leader. He's made the money back in terms of, uh, what he's going to get in tax cuts from Donald Trump.

Facebook and Google had been doing this [01:14:00] for, for a decade. Um, um, and Their moderation sucks because they don't want to pay people to do it. The trick for them has always been the challenge has always been, how do we do this without paying labor? And so their complex system is so complex because you don't have a human being You can go like, oh, wait a second, this person's criticizing racists, not promoting racists, which a human being could do.

Right. Good.

CLIP MARK ZUCKERBERG: Point where it's just too many mistakes and too much censorship. The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech. So we're going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms.

More specifically, here's what we're going to do. First, we're going to get rid of fact checkers and replace them with community notes. We're Similar to X, starting in the U. S. [01:15:00] After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote non stop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy. We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth.

But the fact checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they've created, especially in the U. S. So over the next couple of months, we're going to phase in a more comprehensive community notes system. First off, also, this is all

SAM SEDER - HOST, MAJORITY REPORT: bullshit. Because, I mean, we have seen, uh, where he's gone, uh, what's happened in terms of, um, you know, economic sentiment.

People have biases. And they, it begins to, um, uh, uh, change their perception of facts. And when bird flu, if the bird flu comes, and there's a problem, um, Um, it should not be an up or down [01:16:00] popularity vote by community notes of a platform that has been designed to attract a certain type of, uh, of viewer as to whether, um, what the R value in terms of like the ability of bird flu to be spread from person to person is or what the morbidity rate is for the bird flu.

EMMA VIGELAND - C0-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yeah, I mean, he, this is the, did you notice how he, what the things he listed there that, um, were threats to the platform? Drugs, childhood exploitation, and terrorism? It sounds like he's literally just Taylor, Taylor making his message for the conservatives with the whole like Terrorism and drugs coming over the border and then hey QAnon There's also this sex trafficking here too in the same way that earlier on last year his letter to Jim Jordan and the Republicans Basically framed it and said we were quote, [01:17:00] repeatedly pressured by the Biden administration to remove social media content that, uh, would have been critical of them.

So he, in addition to also donating to the inaugural fund, this is a full capitulation to Donald Trump because Donald Trump in a book that he put out, what was that, uh, earlier the around the same time it had a quote. That he said that he would put Zuckerberg, quote, spend the rest of his life in prison.

SAM SEDER - HOST, MAJORITY REPORT: Right, read that whole thing.

EMMA VIGELAND - C0-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Former President Donald Trump writes in a new book set to be published next week that Mark Zuckerberg plotted against him during the 2020 election and said the Meta chief executive would quote, spend the rest of his life in prison if he did

SAM SEDER - HOST, MAJORITY REPORT: it again. What an amazing coincidence that, uh, that, uh, just days before Donald Trump is inaugurated right after he is made president again, that, uh, Mark Zuckerberg does this.

EMMA VIGELAND - C0-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And you know, another coincidence is that Meta has an antitrust lawsuit in front of the government in April. What a complete coincidence that he would be sucking up to [01:18:00] conservatives during this time period. Um, this is Lena Kahn actually this morning asked about it on CNBC.

CLIP REPORTER: What do you think though of the relationship that we're seeing between Big Tech and the next administration?

What do you make of the meetings, uh, and pilgrimages with which we're seeing Mark Zuckerberg go to Mar a Lago? Or we're seeing a Jeff Bezos interview? Bezos or Tim Cook. I mean, this is a very different kind of relationship than the administration. The Biden administration had and specifically what you represented to the business community.

CLIP LINA KHAN: So I approached my job with a focus on faithfully enforcing the law and making sure we were doing that across the economy without fear or favor. There has been, as you know, a lot of concern. Um, and he's an even as we've seen the president elect announced some of his future appointments, he's noted that he's making these [01:19:00] appointments with a view that they're going to continue to maintain a tough line against some of these big technology companies think

CLIP REPORTER: they are given the meetings that we're seeing, given the million dollar donations to the inaugural.

I mean, I'm on a very personal basis. You know, there's only eight business days left in your role. What What do you make of that?

CLIP LINA KHAN: Well, I can't predict what future people in my position are going to do. It is true that the FTC has been very successful, including in its ongoing litigations against Amazon and Facebook.

And so it's only going to be natural that those companies are going to want to come in and see, can they get of sweetheart deal, right? Can they get some type of settlement that's cheap that settles for pennies on the dollar and gets them escape? Let's them escape from a liability finding in court.

CLIP REPORTER: You see that happening?

Is that what you think is happening?

CLIP LINA KHAN: I hope it won't. But again, I can't predict that. And we are set to go to trial against Facebook this spring against Amazon and fall of 2026. Of course, they would want a sweetheart deal. And I hope [01:20:00] future enforcers wouldn't give them that.

The Oligarch Class Part 3 - Left Anchor - Air Date 1-3-25

RYAN COOPER - CO-HOST, LEFT ANCHOR: Yeah, what you're describing basically is like Downton Abbey, like a, like an aristocratic household, where there's a family of very, very, very rich people and a lower class of people who need, or can be induced to be servants and that's what they are. And like, that was not a great system, but I think what stands out about what you're talking about in your book is the Americans are kind of allergic to the type of class differences that constituted the British aristocracy.

You know, it's like the people who are born into this stuff, like most of the time they are literal, like peers of the realm or whatever. And that came with a certain, noblesse oblige. And one shouldn't romanticize that system, of course. But I think that from what I've read, I'm not an expert in the history of the British aristocracy or anything like that. But the way that Americans think they deserve it. [01:21:00] They deserve the money that they got, whatever, even if they inherited it, probably, especially if they inherited it, they think, oh yeah, that all this money, all this vast wealth that I have, this is mine and nobody else has any claim on it and therefore I get to do whatever I want. I get to order my servants around however I want, whereas I think in the British system, despite the horrible inequality, like there was a sense of I'm just sort of in this position, I'm the lead, and that comes with certain duties. Sort of legacy of the medieval system where like, you can't be that terrible to the servants. Or just acknowledging that, if you're hiring someone to like, wash your balls for you or whatever, that is, you have to behave in a responsible fashion. You have to take account for the needs of the people who are doing the work for you.

And whereas now it's like the absolutely fucking absurd tasks like having your butler drive six hours to go pick up some dirt so your [01:22:00] dog can take a shit. It strikes me as more common. I don't know. I mean, I haven't done any studies on this, but I think that American aristocrats is what they are. This sort of unshakable, permanent ruling class absent, massive economic transformation. They're like aristocrats who think they aren't aristocrats. They think they're self made bootstrapping entrepreneurs. And so they get to push people around whoever they want. And it makes him even more sick than, Lord Baron von Palmerston on Higgins or whatever the fuck.

PROF ROB LARSON: Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. It is worse. It was, you look back at, yes, the upstairs/downstairs Downton Abbey-era, and, it is hideous. It's the worst, the most grotesque entitlement you can have is when people are born into it, who are, like, I'm gonna say, literally entitled. And I am using "literally" correctly. You actually are entitled. You have the title of the Baroness of, yes, friggin Pizzly Wiggles or whatever the hell it is in, Central Britain or something. It's true. Then, though, at least, [01:23:00] yeah, there was this noblesse oblige you have obligations, you're supposed to be providing employment, sure, but also it's this whole idea that you're living the fine life, because only a few people can afford it. Because it's pre capitalism for most of this era. And only a few people can live a fine life and have art and learn French and read, learn to frickin read, and stuff like that. Whereas now, these people have, whatever the opposite of a sense of obligation is what these people have.

And when you feel something like that, you make a foundation and you put your big, fat, dumb name on it and you go, "It's hooray for me, the Professor Rob, I Saved All You Penniless Africans from AIDS foundation." And we can get into the philanthropy if we wish but that is like the way that these guys burnish their reputations. I mean, certainly for everyone else, but for themselves too. Like a lot of these people, when you like look at their biographies, I talked a lot about this in Bit Tyrants, my last book specifically on the tech people, like they're aware that there's a certain amount they deserve and it's not $30 billion. And so you make a foundation and it makes you look better while [01:24:00] the government's antitrusting you, which is important. And also you could say, you know, that's mainly what I do is helping people. And it does work. If you look at the Wikipedia biographies for Bill Gates, Rockefeller, you name it, it's businessmen and philanthropists. Like the main thing they did was just giving money to people.

ALEXI THE GREEK - CO-HOST, LEFT ANCHOR: It works to make them look good. It's not necessarily a good use of our resources.

PROF ROB LARSON: I should be clear. Oh no, it's demonic. I should be clear. It works to make them look and feel better. It destroys the world, of course, around us. Yes, that is accurate.

But it is amazing, because, yeah, it means that today's aristocrats are, like, significantly worse than even the landed gentry, historic aristocrats, or even people depicted in the joke, the aristocrats. That's the level that has been reached by today's billionaires.

Big Tech Backs Trump to Cut Taxes, Boost Crypto, Replace Workers with AI- Roger McNamee - Democracy Now! - Air Date 12-27-24

AMY GOODMAN: So, they are clearly extremely interested in tax cuts and deregulation. Can you talk about the significance of this, what this means for the health of the nation?

ROGER MCNAMEE: So, Amy, I think here’s the fundamental [01:25:00] challenge, that Americans for too long have trusted Silicon Valley. You know, for 50 years, the products that came out of the valley made us more capable. They made us more productive. That is no longer the case. And we have maintained this increasingly tight relationship with technology products, essentially treating everything new as though it would automatically be better than what came before. That has not been the case since the iPhone was introduced in 2007.

And so, the point I would make to everybody is I think we need to change our relationship to technology. You know, what you’re seeing in this space is exactly what the professor just described going on at foreign affairs, which is there are a lot of distractions, a lot of things being thrown out there to grab your attention. But the core things come down to displacing workers with artificial intelligence, displacing the currency with crypto, and getting rid of any kind of taxation on wealth that might come up. [01:26:00] And that’s the agenda. It’s really straightforward. And the only power we have as citizens — and I think it’s a huge power — is to sit there and say, “You know what? We’re not going to use your products anymore.” And we have been accepting all kinds of invasions of privacy, all kinds of surveillance, all kinds of manipulation in exchange for convenience. I think it’s time for us to look at that relationship and ask, “Could we do with less convenience for a while in exchange for regaining human autonomy?” That’s a trade I made a number of years ago, and I’ve been encouraged others to do, and I just think it’s really the only option that we have for at least the next four years.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the relationship of these tech billionaires or oligarchs with workers. I mean, you have Amazon workers out all over the country on strike. Jeff Bezos also owns The Washington Post Of course, Bezos and, what, Patrick Soon-Shiong, who owns the Los Angeles Times, stopped the endorsements of their editorial [01:27:00] boards for Kamala Harris. But the significance of how they deal with workers and what this administration will mean?

ROGER MCNAMEE: Well, if you go back, the great Meredith Whittaker at Signal wrote an essay, I don’t know, maybe a year and a half ago, about the history of computing and how, even back to the 1850s, the predecessor technologies that led to computing were all about control of labor. And it started on plantations and controlling slaves. And you have seen a steady evolution. It was broken — temporarily, it turns out — by the personal computer, which, in fact, empowered people. And then the internet did the same thing.

These guys have been attempting to revert to centralized control ever since, and so that their goal is really, really simple. If you watch artificial intelligence, for example, the mania for AI began — and I do not think this is a coincidence — when Silicon Valley workers [01:28:00] resisted going back into the office after COVID. And the first market they tried to sell it to was Hollywood during the writers’ strike and the Screen Actors Guild strike. And I think it’s really simple. There are ads in San Francisco right now about how you should not employ any more humans. You know, you can employ AI instead of humans. And I sit there and ask a really basic question: Who does that serve? You know, our children are being lured into using ChatGPT for school. And in what way does that benefit them? It doesn’t prepare them for a future in which they’re empowered. It prepares them for a future in which they are disempowered.

AMY GOODMAN: Roger McNamee, how is all this going to be powered? Microsoft wants a nuclear power plant like Three Mile Island. Explain the role of nuclear power, AI and cryptocurrency.

ROGER MCNAMEE: Amy, this is such an important question. You know, even if you thought that artificial intelligence was useful — [01:29:00] and to be clear, it is not at all obvious that the utility of it is anything like as valuable as the cost, but the starting assumptions are totally flawed. So, the industry starts by stealing all copyrighted information, as well as all the personal information that all of us have in cloud services. So, if you think about things you might have in Google Docs or, you know, that you might have in an email server or in an app that does your productivity apps, you know, all of those things are being absorbed. So that’s a theft.

But the second problem, the really huge one, is what it does to natural resources. If you look at Microsoft and Google in particular, both have made commitments to carbon neutrality by 2030. Both in the past year abandoned those commitments, because their power consumption has gone nonlinear, up 30, 40, 50% over the last few years, simply to power artificial intelligence. The same thing is going on with water. A lot of these processing plants, both [01:30:00] for the data and for semiconductors, are located in deserts, and so they’re consuming massive amounts of water.

And the public has had no voice in this. The companies have acted unilaterally. And they’re at the point now where they’re literally talking about restarting Three Mile Island, in Microsoft’s case, or building floating nuclear plants in the Northwest, in the case of Amazon. And I would simply observe that the public really should have a voice in this. And what we decided in this last election is that we were going to forgo that vote and let the industry have control of it. And, you know, I seriously have no idea how this is going to turn out, and I think the only power we have is to say no.

AMY GOODMAN: We just have 30 seconds, Roger, but, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Elon Musk’s worth soared over 70% to $450 billion after the presidential elections. The significance of this?

ROGER MCNAMEE: Well, everything about Trump appears to be pay to [01:31:00] play, right? All of these executives are giving a million dollars each. These are rounding error numbers. This is money they find between the cushions of the couch in their living room. But, you know, it’s basically a protection payment. And in Musk’s case, the investment he made in Trump, which was a quarter of a billion dollars, or the investment he made in Twitter, which was like $44 billion, those have paid off, obviously, many, many times over.

I believe that Trump and Musk will eventually part ways. I mean, I don’t know Trump at all, but he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would put up with someone who competes at the level that Musk competes at. But we’ll have to see how that turns out. My point here is that —

SECTION B: THE MAGA FRACTURE

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering section B the maca fracture.

Elon & Vivek's H1-B Crash Out Part 2 - Bad Faith - Air Date 1-2-25

Q ANTHONY ALI: I think the issue here is that the tech people, or rather, the nativists, are expressing this, and the tech people are just flabbergasted they can't understand it. Most people don't want to have to do that much shit just to live. That's the long short of it. The big problem is here, we're acting as if every single person should have the drive and determination to [01:32:00] want to out hustle all of their pure competitors and have the best job possible. Everybody should shoot for being a CEO.

But that's just not what life is like for most people all over the world. Generally, people want to be able to wake up, sit down for breakfast with their family, see their kids off to school, go to work, work the amount of hours that they agreed to when they signed their work contract, come home, watch TV for a couple of hours, read the kids a bedtime story, and then go to bed themselves.

That's all people want to do. They want to be able to barbecue on weekends, they want to be able to hang out, have fun, do things that don't involve their life revolving entirely around their work. But the issue is, these people in the tech industry have so bought into their own line of thinking, their own ideology, their own tech futurism, that they think everybody should be plugged in all the time, that everybody should be trying to out-hustle everybody else.

That's not how they live. They would like you to think that, but that is just not how they live. Everyone thinks that Elon Musk, running six or seven or eight or ten, I don't know how many different companies that he runs, he's not actually [01:33:00] running it. Essentially, he's just overseeing production for all of these companies. That is not how he lives. That's not how his peers live, but that's how they want the average American to live. And I think the nerve that they struck for a lot of these MAGA nativists is that they don't want to live like that. That's not how their lives, growing up that's not how they saw their lives shaking out. That's not how they want their lives to be, but they see that their lives are being forced in that direction by people that are degrading the standards of the labor market.

BRIAHNA JOY GRAY - HOST, BAD FAITH: I think that's such an important point. If I were to also just frame it a little bit differently, it feels like we all know as leftists (blah) that there are all these kind of systemic barriers. That we have top six people in the country that have more wealth than the bottom 6%. That someone like Elon Musk (denies it, but it is true) inherited this emerald mine, or his father had this emerald mine and had all this wealth that he used to buy Tesla. He didn't start anything from the ground up.

And now these people that are incredible elites, who ran scams like Vivek Ramaswamy to earn their money, turn around and tell the rest of the [01:34:00] masses that they are culturally unfit, that they're undeserving, that they're not hustling hard enough. And the cherry on top is someone like Vivek saying, "And if you hustled as hard as someone who's coming from another country, where they have many fewer opportunities, then you too could succeed."

And no one's asking the question, "Well, do we really want it to be that kind of a dog eat dog world?" Isn't the whole point of America to your point, Q, that you should be able to have a chicken in every pot and a reasonable middle class lifestyle without having working 80 hours a week. And this is, again, what seems like such an interesting opportunity for the left to demonstrate why our analysis is so much superior to that of the right.

You have Matthew Knowles. You know Matthew Knowles. He's one of these conservative commentators. He tweeted a few days ago, "Tired: meritocracy is bad. Wired: meritocracy is good, inspired, the very notion of meritocracy conceals a conception of justice and politics that is dubious upon close inspection." Wait, is he doing CRT?

Q ANTHONY ALI: I was just going to say, that's Critical Race Theory!

BRIAHNA JOY GRAY - HOST, BAD FAITH: Like, this is one of those, I'm pretty [01:35:00] sure he's like a hardcore anti-CRT, anti-woke, blah, blah, blah guy. But they're all kind of coming to this realization.

Q ANTHONY ALI: Hang on a second. We just got white Derrick Bell, that's crazy.

BRIAHNA JOY GRAY - HOST, BAD FAITH: Exactly. What do we do with this? We have people like Laura Loomer out here again, doing these woke discourses again, not totally woke. She's being like super racist while she's doing it.

Q ANTHONY ALI: No, she's being right wing woke is what it is. She's a woke right winger.

BRIAHNA JOY GRAY - HOST, BAD FAITH: How would you describe that? What is Right Wing Woke Q?

Q ANTHONY ALI: Right Wing Wokeness, their third eye has just decalcified, like their third eye has just opened up and they're now starting to see the world for the way it is and not, not- they don't have the blinders over them. So now they're drinking, like, peanut punch. They're drinking the mineral water and whatnot to decalcify themselves. No, seriously, they're gonna be drinking rainwater. They're already on the anti fluoride. But it's be so much worse than that. Now they're actually seeing that there is a class divide. They're actually starting to understand that.

That there's rule by elites. And the people that they thought were elite [01:36:00] previously, were generally like coastal academic liberals. Now they're beginning to understand that the actual true elite are the corporate and financing overlords. The people that they previously used to look up to and worship, they're now beginning to understand, now wait a second, the world that they envision for themselves doesn't include me. I'm just a cog in the machine. I'm just a battery to be plugged in.

What they're actually waking up to is that there is a tangible and variegated class difference, differences in class interest, whereas for them being working class people, they don't intend on being CEOs. They don't intend on commanding multimillion or multibillion dollar salaries. They want to have a comfortable life, raise their children and be able to have fun Christmases 30 or 40 years down the road with their grandkids. They don't aspire to be tech overlords or finance overlords.

But what they're seeing is that these tech and finance overlords have essentially gotten together since the late [01:37:00] 1970s and the 1980s. It's actually really interesting that Jimmy Carter has just passed away, where he was essentially the one that ushered in this neoliberal age that we're in right now with massive deregulation, financialization of almost every industry, and then shipping work either south or overseas. What they're beginning to understand is that they don't fit into the grand scheme of American labor practices.

Essentially, their jobs are going to be so far abstracted away from being able to actually make anything that is of tangible value. They're just going to be sitting at a desk, working a useless email job or simply unemployed altogether because everybody from overseas is going to be brought over to work those useless email jobs.

That's right wing wokeness, but the way that they express it is not through talking about class differences. They're not talking about exploitation of labor, et cetera. They're talking about, they want us to be a bunch of street hitters.

BRIAHNA JOY GRAY - HOST, BAD FAITH: Although I will say some of them are getting pretty close. Tell me, who do you think said this?

Noam Chomsky or Laura Loomer? [01:38:00] "The biggest threat to our country, our freedom and humanity is the unchecked power of technocrat billionaires who have God complexes, access to defense contracts, and openly declare war against dissenters. This should freak you out."

Q ANTHONY ALI: You know, it's actually kind of wild. She's the one that I think blew the whole lid off of all of this, because she was the one that just straight up called out Elon Musk and said that he's a stage- she called him a stage five clinger. He's basically a hanger on to the incoming Trump administration. And what he's doing essentially is just prying the door open for all of his tech buddies, Peter Thiel, Mark Andreessen, David Sachs, et cetera, prying the door open for them to come in and implement their own version of tech futurism in America, but that doesn't leave any room for the ground level people, the people that were there from the very beginning, like the prototypical MAGA-ites. They're pushing people like her out the door. But the way that she expressed it, I think, kind of, like, struck a nerve in working class MAGA Americans to the point where they realized, like, wait a second, these people don't really [01:39:00] give a shit about us.

With the kinds of appointments that Trump was making to his incoming administration, I think what they saw was something that they did not recognize as being originally part of that movement. And it turned them off so much that she was the one that actually gave a voice. It's a very strange combination of racism and class consciousness. It struck that note with many of them. And that's why there was this huge revolt over the past four or five days.

Our Moment is Approaching Part 3 - The Muckrake Political Podcast - Air Date 12-31-24

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Like, they honestly do not understand what Donald Trump is, or what Donald Trump represents. Because he just basically, gestured to them in order to capitalize on basically a niche that existed within our politics In order to get himself in a place to become a grifter king more or less Yeah, and it was just oh you you guys want white national absolutely like i'm actually for white nationalism But meanwhile, i'm just going to go in and serve the wealth class and and worsen this condition meanwhile And Carl, this is the thing [01:40:00] that I keep trying to, to, to get into people's heads.

What Musk is doing is on a whole other level from anything that we've actually seen in the modern era whatsoever. Like, even the rise of the fascists and the Nazis and the authoritarianism of the 20th century, it was a group of industrialists that were pushing this thing. They basically wanted them out there in the streets in order to go after socialists and to take over liberal democracy.

Musk has recognized, much like how Trump recognized within the Republican Party there was an opportunity, Musk has recognized that MAGA, which he paid a couple of hundred million dollars for, That's the wildest thing. He didn't even pay that much for it. He's now trying to take over germany through alternative for deutschland He's also going to try and take over the uk through nigel farage and hopefully some sort of tory alternative And so what has happened?

Is that all of these people who literally believe that they were in a project for a white ethnostate, and yes, they are ideologically Nazis, but they're not even [01:41:00] like the actual neo Nazis. Like, they understand, and that was something that I was tracking for years, which is, as Trump was coming to power, like the actual Nazi groups, the paramilitary groups, the separatists, the accelerationists, They all recognized that Trump wasn't going to give them a white ethnostate.

They thought it was, uh, uh, advantageous to get people radicalized through Trump and bring them over to their side. These people are sort of caught in the middle of something that I don't think that they understand whatsoever, which is that Elon Musk bought MAGA. In order to basically assimilate the United States government, which he's now on the precipice of doing.

On top of that, the, uh, the media structure is not going to side with them. Fox News is not going to have Laura Loomer and Steve Bannon on to give, like, an articulated criticism of Elon Musk. They're not even going to give this any sort of airspace. The Ben Shapiros, all those other people who are being paid by right wing oligarchs, and also Russia, While we're on the [01:42:00] subject are not going to give this their party and their movement got sold off from underneath them, and they don't understand that this has happened.

It just so happens that their racism and Elon Musk's racism, and he is racist, and he has been very openly racist. They do not intersect because their goals have never actually been in line with each other outside of the prioritization of rhetoric and speech and ideology that is white supremacist and patriarchal.

Meanwhile, they're on the outside looking in before January 20th even gets here and are having to come to understand that they are dispensable unless they go ahead and kiss. Musk's boots. Donald Trump is going to push them away and MAGA is going to move on without them because MAGA is now subservient to the wishes of the oligarchical class as opposed to all these other things.

So they can basically, they can shut up and eat shit or they are going to get exorcised [01:43:00] from all of this stuff. They are, they are finding out some real material condition lessons at this point. And that's what's happening as opposed to a major, major schism that's going to derail any of this.

KARL FOLK: No, no, absolutely.

And like, that's the thing, right? Like this is no vert shift in what the goal is because they've achieved a couple of their bigger goals. And for the new right, specifically the techno fascist side, like their whole goal has been to amass enough wealth to then, as you said, assimilate governments, right?

And for them, like the, the neoliberal order. The same way is for modern fascists like Trump has been a really good way for them to get into our lives, right? And For better or worse, you know, we have kind of seeded ground to the tech oligarchs in really [01:44:00] strange ways, right? That even 10 years ago, I think a lot of people might've asked questions about and that money, I mean, I did some quick tape back of the napkin math the other day at, uh, at dinner.

And you know for the price that musk paid both for twitter and for maga He's gotten exactly the return on investment. He

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: was

KARL FOLK: oh, he's already profit off

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: of both of them.

KARL FOLK: Yes Exactly. And and so You know if the goal was never to actually You know, really have Trump be the thing for these people. He was always an avenue for them to get in and then take over, essentially.

Um, they're going, they're well on their way to achieving that as well. And like, Trump's base hasn't figured it out. And [01:45:00] many others haven't. But like, they're gonna get squeezed the hardest. Yes. By what these people are planning to do. And a couple days ago, you know, they, I believe it was Trump, you know, put up a post on, through social media.

That basically laid out the argument for why the economy was not going to fare well while he was a president. And, you know, you start to put all these together, and it becomes more and more clear that some of the more outlandish stuff that the, Silicon Valley new right had been thinking through is really stuff now that might be on the table for them and at least in their mind, right?

So that means they're going to work to enact those goals and like in tech acceleration is as laid out by both. [01:46:00] Yarvin and land kind of the, you know, the, the two kind of minds, two of the bigger minds, the horsemen of

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: the, uh, the fascist at this point.

KARL FOLK: Yeah. Um, you know, their, their whole thing is basically using capitalism and economics as a tool for them to shape society into something that bends to their will, not the other way around.

And so, you know, at the end of the day, like, These people are going to do maximum harm to those who are already the most harmed. And like, you know, as much as none of us like to admit it, like Trump supporters. Not the, uh, four boats and private jet Trump supporters, but like the run of the mill, small town America, Trump supporters, they're going to get just smacked in the face, but

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: they're going to get destroyed.

SECTION C: GLOBAL INFLUENCE

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Up next section C global influence.

Weekly Roundup Jimmy Carter vs Elon Musk Part 2 - Straight White American Jesus - Air Date 1-3-25

BRAD ONISHI - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: We've reached a place in [01:47:00] our politics, whether it's with Christian nationalists, presuppositionalist theologies from reformed circles, uh, those who would say there's no such thing as neutrality. And I just want to point us back to Jimmy Carter.

Jimmy Carter as a religious person is like, keep God out of the government. As a financial actor, he's like, when I get to the white house, I want to have no financial interests. I want no way for me to gain or lose money. That I know about when I go to bed at night when I am president and I have a quiet 10 minutes I don't want to wonder if I've made money today or think about how I could make money today I'm done with that and here's Sununu saying well, everyone has a conflict of interest and my point is like I totally get it, Dan.

You and I have been through the philosophical ringers. Everybody wants to talk. Is there such thing as objectivity? We have said on this show that everybody has feeling and affect and embodiment. I, I, I understand all of that. It does not mean that as a leader, you can't strive to say, I'm going [01:48:00] to do everything possible to serve the people of this country, of this community, of this state with, The same status and respect and voice.

You can try that. You can do things to practice that. You can cultivate that. Let me, I mean, you want

DANIEL MILLER - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: to jump in. I was just going to say, this is like such a fallacy and it's a really common one. I run into it with students all the time because I will say there's no way to not have a perspective on something, especially if it's something important.

If it's something you care about, you know, you and I teach and sometimes we're teaching about stuff that's really, really impactful to us. It's something that we care about. I have a perspective and it's going to color how I teach it. And people should know, I don't teach in the classroom with the voice that I use in the podcast.

Every now and then I'm like, you should be, people are like, you should be ashamed of yourself. And I'm like, I'm not indoctrinating my students. I'm not just there like throwing out my ideas. But there's a difference that the fallacy from we all have interests, we [01:49:00] all have desires, we all have perspectives to therefore, I guess anything goes, right?

There's nothing wrong with, with grinding your own axe or pushing your own agenda. It's a fallacy for the reason that you're hinting at is that we can be aware of that. We can reign that in. We can put that on the table. We can put that out front and say, I have this perspective. And I think it probably colors how I look at things.

I'm, I'm open to hearing others. I want to hear other perspectives or just recognizing that it's, it's a fallacy that gets inserted and it really throws people because it's, I think it's a false alternative that you either have some sort of pure neutrality or objectivity or it's just pure subjectivity, whatever anybody thinks is of equal value or equal worth.

It's a false choice, but it's one that gets put out all the time. It's one that Sununu is putting here. And what it does in this case is it licenses the worst impulses within a kind of advanced American capitalism, which is part of what Musk is [01:50:00] within this technocratic elitist wing of the MAGA movement, it unleashes and licenses the worst.

Elements of that because it accepts whether, whether, you know, strategically or ignorantly or whatever, it accepts that false alternative. And I just want to put that out there. People have to know that that's a false alternative. The last example I'll give is, you know, you teach philosophy classes sometimes, and there's certain questions people have been arguing about, but like, as long as people have been arguing about questions, right, they might feel unresolvable.

And one of the things I tell students is I'm like, you know, just because we're not sure what the right answer is. Doesn't mean we don't know what some wrong answers are. And I think it's the same kind of thing. Yes, there may be perspective. Yes, there may be interests that sneak in. Yes, we may, in retrospect, realize that we had perspectives that we didn't know were there or biases and so forth.

That doesn't mean we can't identify those biases and seek to mitigate them and have that eye out moving [01:51:00] forward for just the knowledge that, you know what, maybe I will bring my perspective in here in a way that I don't want to or that isn't fair to others. So, I don't mean to hijack that, but it's just, it's such a fallacy and we find it not just in the classroom or in abstract philosophical discussion, but in the concrete discourse of somebody like Sununu.

BRAD ONISHI - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: Well, and everything you said is so spot on because what Sununu says is the guy's worth 450 billion dollars. So I don't think he's doing it for the money. He's doing it for the bigger project and bigger vision. What else is

DANIEL MILLER - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: he doing

BRAD ONISHI - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: it

DANIEL MILLER - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: for? I'm, sorry, like 450 billion dollars. Everything you have ever done is for the money like that.

Ah, sorry, like

BRAD ONISHI - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: dan dan dan Calm down because you know what I need to tell you is there's something that I know about rich people Okay, they're the kind of people that they they make a lot and then one day they they sit up in bed and they're like I think i've done enough I no longer need this much.[01:52:00]

That's all the rich people I've ever met have, have always just been the kinds that are like, once I've hit this amount of power and influence, I will stop. And so I, yeah, of course that's what's in it. No. So a couple of things here. I don't think he's doing it for the money. He's doing it for the bigger project and the bigger vision of America.

So here's the deal, y'all. Here's the deal. Jimmy Carter, rest in peace, a hundred years old, a unique life that will never be. Ever be repeated the first resident born in a hospital. I mean jimmy carter dan lives from Like the roaring twenties to all the way to the point where we have supercomputers in our, in our pocket.

And we just talked about the ways that he was not doing it for the money as president. He lost money as the president of the United States as a farmer, a farmer was president and he lost money serving the American people. Was he the perfect president? No, but just a, that's a [01:53:00] B. He was a thoroughly committed Christian who said God should not be part of the government.

So Elon Musk, if you're doing this for. The country for the bigger vision of america step down right now step down Step down as leader of every company. You have cash out get your your Let somebody hold all of the power when it comes to the government contracts the the corporate interests tesla spacex starlink get yourself out and then Continue to live at mar a lago and then continue to do what you're doing.

I'll just say dan that You He, we don't have time to go through it today, but Musk wrote an op ed for Die Welt on AFD, which is the neo Nazi party in Germany. And he made so many falsehoods. He overlooked so many things and the editor of that newspaper stepped down because they published it. But one of the things he says in there is, I [01:54:00] think I have, I am not German and I do not live in Germany, but I think I have the right to appear in, in like Germany's paper of record as an op ed writer.

Because I have invested so much in the country. Do you know what he's saying there? I am so rich, I deserve a voice. I am so rich, you get to listen to me now. That's why I get to pop up into your feed if you're a German. Because I don't live here. I've never lived here. I'm not a citizen. And I'm not really somebody who's ever planning to have anything but a financial interest in your country, but you still have to listen to me.

Does that sound like a guy who's doing it for the bigger project and bigger vision of Germany? Then why would I ever think he's doing it for the bigger project of America? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard, Sununu, okay? And I have to say it for the second time in this podcast. Sununu, Sunono, okay?

That's what I'm saying. Sorry, Dan. It's a new year. It's a new year. I'm feeling As spry as I [01:55:00] can feel right now. And all of that, this leads to what Laura Loomer said, and I want to play a clip from Laura Loomer. And this is really the epitome of the civil war that's happening between Laura Loomer versus Elon Musk, Ramaswamy and the tech magnate.

So here's Laura Loomer.

CLIP: And what we need to have a conversation about is what is it going to mean for the future of our country, our national security and the incoming trump administration. If we have a bunch of technocrats who are also essentially welfare queens because their companies are receiving government subsidies and they want to take over our defense industry.

If you have a bunch of tech bros with billions of dollars and direct unfettered access to the vice president and the president of the United States, and then they are also, you know, very cordial with our adversaries as in China and Iran. We see that Elon Musk is having these meetings off the books with Iranian [01:56:00] officials, with Chinese officials.

What does that mean for us and the future of our constitutional republic?

Is Elon Musk Heir To Nazi Dream of World Conquest- w- Jim Stewartson - Thom Hartmann Program - Air Date 1-7-25

THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM: An operation paper

JIM STEWARTSON: was a classified program that, uh, the U S intelligence services, um, uh, executed, um, The end of World War Two, um, and for, um, years after, uh, and it brought over at least 1600 Nazi engineers, scientists, and others, um, over to the United States, uh, to, uh, help fight the, the Cold War.

And one of those Nazis, uh, was a guy named Werner von Braun. Uh, and Werner von Braun, um, Invented the V2 rocket, which was otherwise known as the Vengeance rocket, uh, and it terrorized London and Antwerp at the end of World War Two. Um, and this guy who [01:57:00] created the, the V2 rocket, um, was part of Operation Paperclip and he's, uh, uh, relevant.

It's part of Operation Paperclip. It seems to the richest man's life in ways that are surprising.

THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM: Yeah. So he comes to America and while he's here, he writes a book called Mars Project in German, uh, at Fort Bliss, Texas, and publishes it in 1952 in English. Tell us about the science fiction novel that Verner Von Braun wrote.

JIM STEWARTSON: Yes, well, it's a science fiction novel, but it's a very technical science fiction book the whole last third of it is real technical drawings, etc Rocket scientist it was by one of the most famous rocket scientists in History. He was a Nazi, but he was a legitimate rocket scientist, but he wrote this science fiction book, um, called Mars project.[01:58:00]

And in the book, um, there is a, a sort of, uh, figure on earth, um, who demands that we become multi planetary. which is something Elon Musk says constantly, um, and that, uh, we have to, um, colonize Mars. Well, it turns out when you get to Mars, there's a colony there already. And in the lead with that

THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM: in the novel,

JIM STEWARTSON: yeah, in the novel.

Yes. I was not, we're not breaking news here. Uh, yes. In the, in the novel, you get there and there's a colony and the leader of the colony is. a lot.

THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM: E. L. O. N.

JIM STEWARTSON: E. L. O. N. The alarm. Um, and, and so you may think, well, that's a strange coincidence. Um, and you know, I kind of heard this story and thought, you know, Hey, maybe it's apocryphal.

But [01:59:00] then I went and started listening to Errol Musk, who is Elon Musk's father. And Errol Musk said out loud that as a, a child growing up in apartheid South Africa, he was taught, uh, these science fiction books that they, he was a, a, you know, huge rocketry fan and that he did in fact, name his son after the Allah.

So he's Elon Musk's father says this is Elon

THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM: Musk is named after the guy who ruled the colonies on Mars in the novel written by the Nazi rocket scientist, Werner von Braun, and to make it even weirder. Those colonies did not live on the surface. Now, Elon has this company called the Boring Company that drills tunnels.

Tell us about how the people lived on Mars. The in the in the novel. Well, yes, there's

JIM STEWARTSON: also do you remember Hyperloop? Oh, yeah. [02:00:00] Hyperloop. Yeah. Well, you

THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM: tell people what it is for a lot of people. You know, I remember a lot of people don't know what we're talking. It

JIM STEWARTSON: was this, it was this project that was meant to create a, a high speed, um, railway of sorts between, um, San Francisco and LA.

And it was going to be in a tunnel, in a, in a closed. Loop. And, um, which is very reminiscent of the tunnels on Mars that Wernher von Braun said the Alon was in charge of.

THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM: Because people couldn't live on the surface because the surface is so hostile. So this entire society on Mars that they discovered when the Ameri when, you know, humans got there, was living underground in these tunnels.

JIM STEWARTSON: That's right. Living underground in these tunnels, which tells you that even back then, Werner Von Braun knew that trying to colonize Mars was not going to happen unless somehow you were able to create a [02:01:00] subterranean planet. World, right? Right. Um, uh, one other thing that I think is important to understand is that this colony underground was a technocracy.

So it was, the Alon was, was basically the dictator, but his court of jesters, as it were, and people around him, um, were all technocrats, engineers and scientists, et cetera. Um, because, uh, he considered those people to be the only people who really should be involved in such, you know, difficult, kind of a benevolent dictatorship, essentially.

Exactly. And, and, uh, something to know about Elon Musk is that his. Maternal grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, was literally the leader of a pro Hitler fascist movement in the 30s and 40s called Technocracy Inc. You can, this, again, it's [02:02:00] crazy. You can look it up. And what they did, what they wanted was a society that was ruled by By technocrats,

THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM: by engineers and scientists, et cetera.

Just like the Society on Mars. And this novel run by the Elon. By the Elon.

JIM STEWARTSON: Exactly. And one thing to know also about Elon Musk, uh, to give you an idea of how sort of deep this this goes with him, is that on his SEC filings for Tesla, he's not the CEO, he's not the CTO, he's the techno king of Tesla.

Interesting. Literally, that's his title, according to the Security and Exchange Commission. And the reason for that is because, you know, that's how he sees the world. That's how he sees himself, as this sort of benevolent dictator, as you said. There's a full lot of these billionaires have latched onto.[02:03:00]

called long termism. Um, it's also called effective altruism. And it's basically the idea that billionaires are so much smarter and more powerful and capable than everyone else, that they should make these decisions for us. They're going to make the hard choices and let the, you know, the, the citizens just take their medicine.

Unfortunately, you know, for the rest of us, one of those, those, you know, um, imperatives for Elon Musk is literally going to, he doesn't care who gets hurt on earth in the process.

Crack-Up Capitalism- How Billionaire Elon Musk's Extremism Is Shaping Trump Admin & Global Politics Part 2 - Democracy Now! - Air Date 1-6-24

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: The power of Elon Musk cannot be underestimated, from here in the United States — and we’re going to talk about the Trump administration — well, many are calling him, of course, “President Musk” and “Vice President Donald Trump” — to, well, the latest kerfuffle in Britain and his support [02:04:00] for the AfD in Germany. If you can talk about the significance of all of this?

QUINN SLOBODIAN: Yeah, it’s a pretty extraordinary situation to find ourselves in, right? I mean, if you think back to 2017, there was a lot of concern and attention to the efforts of Steve Bannon to create a kind of transatlantic coalition of far-right actors and parties. Imagine now here we are only a few years later, and there’s a Bannon-like figure but who also happens to be the wealthiest man in the world, overseeing some of the most profitable companies in the planet, who is leading that sort of effort to create a transatlantic coalition. So, the stakes are much, much higher. They are being dealt with with perhaps even less kind of care than someone like Bannon, which is an extraordinary thing to say. But Musk, I think, has entered this field of politics as a kind of [02:05:00] scaled-up version of his video game play, with no real thought to the kind of consequences of the disruptive effects that he’s creating, from here to Britain to Germany and beyond.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And let’s talk specifically about the conversation we’re having on this day, on January 6th, when the vice president, Kamala Harris, who presides over the Senate, will essentially certify her own loss, and this fourth anniversary of what took place January 6th,

QUINN SLOBODIAN: 2021.

Well, I think that, you know, the January 6 is apropos for a couple reasons. One is kind of silly but also meaningful, which is, if you look at the character that Musk uses when he plays the game Diablo IV, which he describes as giving him life lessons and allowing him to see the matrix, [02:06:00] the guy kind of looks quite a bit like the QAnon shaman, so well known from January 6. So, January 6, in a way, kind of, I think, opened this new era in American politics where the kind of surreal, fringe, often online communities have sort of entered the world of sort of high politics and have scrambled the kind of coordinates of average rules of the game and the normal sort of protocols. I think that Musk is someone who is really a product of that kind of crossover effect, where building up a kind of huge online community, building up the sort of status as a global media influencer, has now the capacity to actually shatter existing coalitions, shatter existing standards of what normal politics is. And his connections now to people like Nigel Farage, until recently, Tommy Robinson, [02:07:00] the AfD, Giorgia Meloni, these are signs of kind of a willingness to shatter existing traditional party systems, to embrace disruption kind of for its own sake, and to really harness especially the power of the internet to make possible things that had been previously impossible, so to make certain forms of speech possible, to make certain forms of mobilization possible, and to make things like, you know, the attempted coup d’état in January 6 something that could actually be followed through to its conclusion.

And I think that, you know, the kind of — the horizon of what the kind of politics in real life that someone like Musk is aiming at is broadcast by him frequently on his own Twitter account. Most recently, for example, he celebrated Nayib Bukele, the leader in El Salvador, as having done something that has [02:08:00] happened in El Salvador and will happen and must happen in the United States, which, in El Salvador, has been to imprison 2% of the adult population as an absolutely draconian way of cracking down on crime. So, this vision of sort of authoritarian strongman on politics, sort of gloves-off mass incarceration crackdowns, on the one hand, and then a deregulatory kind of unleashing of the free market, on the other hand, is — produced this kind of curious combination of, on the one hand, Elon Musk posting Milton Friedman memes all the time, on the other hand, scaremongering about the, quote-unquote, “genocidal rape tactics” of nonwhite immigrants in the U.K. So, he’s produced this sort of surreal effect, I think, of sort of the strong state and the free market turning the sort of Thatcherist vision, grafting it onto all kinds of online aesthetics and kind of video game [02:09:00] dynamics in ways that have really, I think, blindsided, for good reason, sort of mainstream, normal politicians, like Olaf Scholz, Keir Starmer, Biden-Harris, who don’t know how to deal with this kind of chaotic energy, which, unfortunately, has a huge amount of legitimacy behind it, not only his multimillion-dollar — or, multimillion number of followers on social media.

But keep in mind, I mean, he oversees Tesla, which is a car company that is worth more than all the other car companies in the world combined, whose valuation has gone vertical since Trump’s election, whose stocks are held in the portfolios of many, many, many Democrats who might otherwise find Musk, as a person, and his politics objectionable. So, he is a kind of a locomotive who has sort of attached himself to the very dynamics of both the online sort of meme market, but also the very much offline stock market, in ways that makes him hard to reckon with and hard to actually oppose.

GOP Already At Each Other's Throats While Musk Gloats Part 2 - The Muckrake Political Podcast - Air Date 12-24-24

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: And I do want [02:10:00] to take a second in the midst of all of this conversation. You brought up Greenland. Like, there is an effect in how all of this stuff sort of takes place.

Like, for instance, you know, we didn't even talk about the fact that the Canadian government is on the brink of falling apart. Justin Trudeau, very, there's a very good chance he's going to have to resign and will be replaced by a right wing government Simply because Donald Trump said some things about tariffs with Canada, which is going to set in motion, you know, the countries that are underneath the American sort of tree.

We've talked about how countries like Israel and Saudi Arabia, they're sort of straddling the line between, you know, the Russia, China, uh, coalition and the United States of America. So they can get away with whatever they want. Meanwhile, you have other countries like Canada that basically have to fall in line based on something that Trump will say.

He's being used as a, as a battering ram. And then, meanwhile, while we're talking about this, we also have to talk about the fact that Germany, which is in alignment with the United States of America as part [02:11:00] of that Western liberal democratic sort of coalition, it's starting to fall apart as well because of far right tropes, conspiracy theories, and put, uh, all the stuff that's happening, uh, with, with their plans and strategies.

What is Musk doing now? He is voicing support for Alternative for Germany, which is a far right, neo Nazi adjacent group that is gaining power, much like all these places. It's gaining power in France, gaining power in England, gaining power in Germany, and now in Canada. All those places that are aligned with America.

And we're hearing now that he is planning on maybe throwing 100 million towards Nigel Farage in the UK. In Germany, we're seeing the ascendance of this as they're coming into alignment with Russia, China, and the right wing international movement. And what are we seeing with it? We're seeing in Magdeburg, there was a terrorist attack on a Christmas market that killed at least five people.

And it was carried out by a guy who is a huge fan of Elon Musk. He's a huge fan [02:12:00] of Alex Jones. He's listened to all these conspiracy theories. And what does that do? It creates a more violent environment in which right wing authoritarians are able to gather more and more power. It's, it's a domino effect.

And what we're seeing take place right now is a lot of these dominoes are starting to fall.

NICK HAUSELMAN - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: I just want to go a little deeper into the, uh, the terrorist attack in Germany because Appears like they'd be a Muslim and from a Muslim country, but was actually virulently anti Muslim and having been living in Germany since I think 06.

So to see the, um, it's not Koch, what is it? The seed of the right wingers who can't, Use that right. They want to be able to say, look, this is a Muslim extremist who's driven a car into a nice people in Germany. And they can't do that. And you can see them getting just upset about it. That's what's so disgusting about all these things.

And you, and I have, I guess I'm dip my toe back into Twitter a little bit. And it really had, I had, you've been doing this Jared at all. If you'd be going back to Twitter. Um, you know,

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: I, I've been off the grid, so [02:13:00] I've been as far away from social media as I possibly can, but yes, I've been keeping an eye on Twitter, which has been turned into a propaganda organ, so unfortunately, yes, I have to study that damn place.

NICK HAUSELMAN - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: It's far worse than it ever has been, even though I gotta tell you, Blue Sky is kind of like, it had a big influx, and it's sort of Nick,

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: I'm glad you brought this up, because just, I want to let people know, I talked about this a little bit on the Discord, it's There is a huge operation that's taking place on Blue Sky, and I think it has a lot of implications.

I've been studying it, but yes, it's more or less been flooded with a lot of accounts that are trying to spread disinformation, and also to continue sort of the liberal coalition rift that we've talked about in the past. So yes, it's sort of being infiltrated in much the same way that Twitter

NICK HAUSELMAN - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: was as well.

Yeah, I mean, and the sky is blue, but, but, uh, it's the, it's the engagement too. Like there was a lot of engagement, like I was getting more engagement on my political blue sky than I ever had on my Twitter, blue sky, Twitter account. Even though my Twitter account had many more followers. Right. And I have to, I'm going to choose to believe in my conspiracy adult [02:14:00] brain that, you know, I would tweak Musk all the time.

And I'm convinced that like, they put me on some sort of thing where like, you know, those tweets don't go anywhere. Of course they don't. But it's starting to do something there too. So it's frustrating because yeah, one, one little dip of my toe back on the Twitter and it's really disgusting. So, but again, it's important for our work because we need to monitor what they're saying, what they're feeling and what the, you know, the news on that end is, is reflecting, um, however, you know, soul killing it can be, uh, just so, cause other people probably listen to this, don't aren't as connected to that.

And it's really a fascinating how, The scapegoat of trying to use Muslim extremism for terrorism when in reality, like in our country, it's usually white people who commit these horrible, you know, uh, the mass shootings and stuff. It, it's, it, it really is, um, indicative and, and a problem.

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Well, a lot of what we're seeing here, and, and for the record, the way that this misinformation sort of works and the way that the propaganda works is you do multiple things.

There's going to be one group that's very frustrated that they can't use it for their [02:15:00] traditional purposes, and another group's just going to do it. We saw that, of course, in, uh, Great Britain, where there was an attack, and they instantly, like, blamed it on, you know, uh, one person, when it turns out it was another person.

That's one of the reasons why this guy who carried out this attack in Germany carried it out was because he had been inundated with Alex Jones style conspiracy theories that framed it in a different way, uh, and included Tommy Robinson, you know, one of these far right shitheads who is part of this whole sort of ecosystem.

So, what's happened over time, Nick, is something that I, I was afraid of going back into, I would say 2016, 2017, which was the Overton window started to change, the environment started to change, people started getting affected by this, even if they understand it's bullshit, it sort of moves things around, which has now led to a place Where again, you have an international authoritarian movement, China, Russia, North Korea, uh, Turkey is on that list, you name it, Venezuela, whatever.

They, they have this sort of coalition that's moving more towards autocracy, and now the [02:16:00] liberal democracies are naturally being moved in that direction on purpose, you know, again, France is falling to it, Germany is falling to it, the United States of America re elected Donald Trump, Canada is starting to go in that direction.

It is an assimilation, and the propaganda and misinformation that we're talking about right now has done its job. I mean, it's, it is the equivalent, again, of playing a completely rigged game in which one team isn't playing all that hard, and the other team is not just playing a rigged game, they've been playing a multi faceted, eight dimensional chess game.

So we're starting to see this stuff move around. That doesn't mean it's a fait accompli. It does mean that we're going to have Push back against this stuff and it starts with being aware of it and covering it as opposed to just acting like everything is happening in a vacuum, which again is one of the reasons we do this podcast in the first place.

SECTION D: ORGANIZING

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally section D organizing.

Our Moment is Approaching Part 4 - The Muckrake Political Podcast - Air Date 12-31-24

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Well, and, and speaking of the Mangione thing, we didn't have a chance to cover it because of the, the certain amount of time that we were recording and going on, uh, holiday and all that. [02:17:00] They've already made the concession to the billionaire and the millionaire class on that. The DOJ went ahead and charged him with terrorism.

And what are we going to see? Undoubtedly, we're going to see Trump push more of that. We're going to see more and more money thrown at law enforcement. This will probably be one of the reasons why we'll see like even more buildup in law enforcement and surveillance. Then what happens at the lower level is this.

They like Trump like people like where I'm from in southern indiana. They like Trump because he's not politically correct, because he says that the elites are crooked, he knows that all of this shit, like that's why they're into that. The racism is part of it, the patriarchal shit is part of that as well.

But they are similarly troubled by Elon Musk. They don't want a wealthy tech, you know, uh, pharaoh, they don't, they don't want that, they want Trump to be that. And there's already an obvious sort of division here between Trump being a figurehead for this tech fascist push that's [02:18:00] taking place. And what you brought up is important, and it gets a little squishy here, Carl, because as you and I, who are both working behind the scenes, we don't need to talk about what it is that we're doing in a private forum.

Why? Because we're in the middle of a class war. And I just want to make it clear that actually one of the things that works to our advantage is the people that you and I are talking about, whether it's Bannon or Yarvin or any number of these people, including the wealth class and their think tanks and their institutes, they have broadcast Everything that they have wanted to do that is one of the reasons why we know what they're doing They've been very exactly about it.

So we can't talk about it. We can't talk about it explicitly, but I will say this Anybody who is a leftist or even going back to the progressives who fought this battle a century ago? What they recognized was that there are class contradictions when it comes to power and particularly within capitalist countries.

You have to understand them, you have to learn to [02:19:00] communicate about them, and you have to look for moments of opportunity. And what you just brought up is exactly the right point, which is, this thing isn't going to resolve itself. This thing's not just going to go away But it's also not going to tear MAGA apart and ruin trump's second administration in the plans of elon musk There has to be pressure put upon it.

There has to be organizing that's used against it You have to use every opportunity to talk to people who quite frankly have been duped And you're also going to have to talk to some racist people, and some sexist people, and some xenophobic people, and some gay and transphobic people. It doesn't mean that you tell them that what they're saying is okay, because it is not okay.

But you need to be able to talk to them about the fact that their prejudices have been used against them. And the evidence is right there for everyone to see. Which is This fight right here. They say they're for free speech. Well, they're taking away the free speech rights of all the people that disagree [02:20:00] with them constantly.

Oh, they say that they're for a white ethnostate. Well, look what they're doing here. They're looking to bring in an underclass of controllable workers from another country, which is what they've claimed that liberals in the deep state were doing all along. That's what they want to do to help them. You have to be able to talk about this stuff and give them an alternative that gives actual solutions as opposed to the bullshit that Trump and all these people have peddled towards them.

KARL FOLK: Exactly. Exactly.

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: This is what we've been shown in the past. This is the only thing that works against this stuff. Unless, of course, you want to go to war with them. And you want to have a world war where those things get settled and actually those differences just kind of get taken care of and it goes underneath the surface.

But that's not particularly where I want to go with this thing.

KARL FOLK: No. No. No, no. And I mean, that's just it, right? Like you have to give people viable options that aren't up here above their head, right? Like you have to give people. Options that are right in front of them and you have to be able to give [02:21:00] them real world examples of how and why it's worked the way it has.

Right? Like the thing that I think for a lot of people that we have a very hard time in this country specifically talking to other people we think we may not agree with and it's gotten worse. Right? So that's tough. A lot of that's based on good reasoning, right? A lot of the politics have gotten to a point where it is dangerous to talk to other people, depending on where you are and who you are.

100 percent true. But there are going to be moments where you're going to have an opportunity literally to say to someone, look, you got screwed. I got screwed. We're actually in the same boat. I don't really, you know, you don't have to probably say it, but like, I don't really like you or your politics. Do you know who else got screwed?

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Gay, trans people of color. Exactly. Women got [02:22:00] screwed. Exactly. All

KARL FOLK: of us are in the same boat together.

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Yes.

KARL FOLK: They just happened to get you to believe that they, that you were in a different boat, which you were not. And that was always the goal. Right. And so people, people want. Material change in the positive for them.

Credits

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: That's going to be it for today. As always keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about today's topic or our upcoming topics: the legacy of Jimmy Carter and his biggest issues, the disconnect between labor and the left, and the LA fires and the politics of water in the age of climate change. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at 202-999-3991, or simply email me to [email protected]. The additional sections of the show included clips from Left Anchor, The Majority Report, Democracy Now!, Bad Faith, The Muckrake Political Podcast, The Thom Hartmann Program, and Straight White American [02:23:00] Jesus. Further details are in the show notes.

Thanks everyone for listening. Thanks to Deon Clark and Erin Clayton for their research work for the show and participation in our bonus episodes. Thanks to our Transcriptionist Quartet—Ken, Brian, Ben, and Lara—for their volunteer work helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work behind the scenes and her bonus show co-hosting. And thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships. You can join them by signing up today at bestoftheleft.com/support, through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple podcast app. Membership is how you get instant access to our incredibly good and often funny weekly bonus episodes, in addition to there being no ads and chapter markers in all of our regular episodes, all through your regular podcast player. You'll find that link in the show notes, along with the link to join our Discord community, where you can also continue the discussion. And don't forget to follow us on any and all new social media platforms you may be joining these days.

So, coming to you from far outside the conventional wisdom of Washington DC, my name is Jay, and this has been the Best of the Left [02:24:00] podcast coming to you twice weekly, thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show, from bestoftheleft.com.

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#1681 Trump's American Imperialism: Threatening Friends and Annoying Neighbors (Transcript)

Posted by · January 08, 2025 6:05 PM

Air Date 1/8/2025

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast.

Trump's first term was marked by all of the friendships he built with some of the world's worst, most oppressive leaders. His second term is getting an early start as he has begun making threats toward traditional allies and friends, including Canada, Mexico, Greenland, and Panama so far.

For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our Top Takes in about 50 minutes today includes The Geopolitical Economy Report; The Wall Street Journal Opinion: Potomac Watch -- surprising, I know; DW News; Politics Unpacked; Democracy Now!; and The Muckrake Political Podcast.

Then in the additional Deeper Dives half of the show there'll be more in four sections: Section A. Panama; Section B. Manifest Destiny; Section C. Elon Musk and Section D. Trump 2.0.

Make US imperialism great again: Trump threatens to colonize Panama, Canada, Greenland, Mexico- Geopolitical Economy Report - Air Date 12-27-24

BEN NORTON - HOST, GEOPOLITICAL ECONOMY REPORT: There's a popular narrative claiming that Donald Trump is [00:01:00] supposedly an isolationist who's against war and intervention. In order to believe this, you have to ignore his extremely hawkish foreign policy during Trump's first term, when he killed the top Iranian general, Qasem Soleimani, and tried to overthrow the Iranian government.

He also killed a top Iraqi military commander and occupied Iraq, refusing to withdraw US troops from Iraq. He expanded the war on Yemen, brutally bombing Yemen. He expanded the war in Afghanistan. He boasted of selling offensive weapon systems to Ukraine.

DONALD TRUMP: Excuse me. I didn't. I'm the one that gave Ukraine offensive weapons and tank killers. Obama didn't. You know what he sent? He sent pillows and blankets.

BEN NORTON - HOST, GEOPOLITICAL ECONOMY REPORT: He backed a coup attempt in Venezuela and waged economic war against Venezuela.

DONALD TRUMP: Venezuela. How about we're buying oil from Venezuela? When I [00:02:00] left, Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken it over. We would have gotten all that oil. It would have been right next door.

BEN NORTON - HOST, GEOPOLITICAL ECONOMY REPORT: He backed a violent coup in Bolivia that overthrew Bolivia's elected government. He waged a trade war against China and he even boasted of leaving US troops in Syria to take its oil.

DONALD TRUMP: And then they say he left troops in Syria. You know what I did? I left troops to take the oil. I took the oil. The only troops I have are taking the oil.

BEN NORTON - HOST, GEOPOLITICAL ECONOMY REPORT: So that was Donald Trump during his first term as US president. Well now he's coming back to the White House in January 2025. And what is he pledging to do in his second term? Again, very interventionist, hawkish policies. It's the opposite of isolationism. Donald Trump is threatening multiple countries, including he wants to colonize Panama and take over the Panama canal, in a [00:03:00] blatant violation of the sovereignty of the Central American nation.

Donald Trump also wants to expand the US empire and take over Greenland, which is an autonomous territory. It was a colony of Denmark and it has a large indigenous population. They do not want to be a colony of anyone. They want their own sovereignty.

Trump and his nominees are discussing plans to invade Mexico, the US southern neighbor, another blatant violation of sovereignty. And Trump is even talking about potentially annexing Canada and making it the 51st US state.

Now, Trump supporters claim this is a joke, it's not serious. But he's threatening the northern and southern neighbors of the US. He's threatening China. He's threatening Iran. This is the opposite of isolationism. This is extreme imperialism.

Trump made an extremely bizarre post on Christmas on his website, Truth [00:04:00] Social, in which he threatened Panama, China, Canada, and Greenland. Christmas is supposed to be about peace and love and family. But instead, Trump insisted that the US will take over Greenland. He once again said that Canada should become the 51st state, which, again, is a not so subtle threat to annex Canada. And then he falsely claimed that Chinese soldiers are operating the Panama Canal, which is completely false, but Trump is trying to provide a justification for colonizing the Panama Canal, which he said very clearly he wants to take over. And he's using China as a boogeyman to try to justify that.

And meanwhile, some of the biggest pro-Trump right wing accounts on social media are talking about expanding the US empire, colonizing Mexico, colonizing Canada, colonizing Cuba and Nicaragua. These huge [00:05:00] pro-Trump accounts on Twitter that have millions of followers, largely because they're constantly promoted by Elon Musk, who's going to be a top official in the second Trump administration. They are invoking Manifest Destiny. This is blatant colonialism. Again, this is the opposite of isolationism. They're saying they want the US empire to colonize sovereign countries, and they're portraying this as base. They're saying, oh, if you are opposed to imperialism and colonialism, it's because you're "woke."

This is not isolationism. This is blatant colonialism, and warmongering.

Another example of this was Donald Trump's former undersecretary of defense for intelligence, Ezra Cohen, who is one of the top officials in the Pentagon in Trump's first administration, he quoted Trump's comments threatening to take over the Panama canal, and Ezra Cohen wrote in all caps, quote: MAKE THE MONROE DOCTRINE GREAT AGAIN [00:06:00] end quote. Again, this was one of the top officials in Trump's Pentagon the first time, he's very likely going to come back in Trump's second administration. He's also worked with the CIA and previously with the Defense Intelligence Agency, the DIA This is a former top US government official who oversaw the war machine's intelligence apparatus, and he's invoking the 200-year-old colonial Monroe Doctrine, which essentially claims that Latin America is the so-called backyard of the US empire.

These people are blatant neo colonialists. And yet Trump and some of his allies claim that they're right wing populists who are against neoconservatives, but they're showing that they're just as imperialist as neocons. They're threatening many countries with war, invasion, conquest, occupation, and colonization. And they can say it's jokes, but a lot of countries around the world are very scared [00:07:00] because the US empire has invaded dozens of countries just in the past few decades. The US military has intervened in the vast majority of countries on Earth.

So when the president-elect talks about annexing Canada, and invading Mexico, and taking over the Panama Canal, that's not seen as a joke, that's seen as a threat, given the historical precedent, which I'll be talking about today.

Let's start with the Panama canal. This is one of the most important trade choke points on earth. About 5 percent of global maritime trade passes through the Panama canal. And Donald Trump wants the U S to colonize the Panama canal to take it over, given the historical precedent that previously it had been US colonial territory until 1999. So on the 21st of December, Donald Trump posted on his social media platform, Truth Social, he said, quote, "We will demand [00:08:00] that the Panama Canal be returned to us in full and without question. To the officials of Panama, please be guided accordingly," end quote. This is a threat to a sovereign country. And in order to justify this threat of colonizing part of Panama, Donald Trump pointed to China. As always, he fear mongers about China. The Panamanian government condemned this threat by Trump and Panama's president, Jose Raul Molino, said, quote, "Every square meter of the Panama canal and its adjacent areas belongs to Panama and will continue belonging to Panama." End quote.

Now what's ironic about this is that Molino, the president of Panama, is from a right wing party and he's been a very pro US politician. He's not in any way an anti-imperialist leftist. But even right wing US allies in Latin America are scared now because the [00:09:00] US president-elect is threatening to colonize and take over their territory.

Panama's president Molino stressed that, quote, "The canal has no direct or indirect control from China, nor the European Union, nor the United States or any other power." End quote. In response to that, Donald Trump, once again threatening Panama saying, quote, "We'll see about that." End quote. And then Trump posted a photo with a US flag over water. And he said, "Welcome to the United States canal."

Again, this is a direct threat to colonize sovereign territory of a foreign country. And yet Elon Musk, the richest oligarch on earth, who helped to fund Donald Trump's presidential campaign and is going to be a top official in the second Trump administration, he tweeted, quote, "2025 is going to be so lit [laughing emoji]" With this, these [00:10:00] images of Donald Trump threatening to colonize Panama. So he thinks this is hilarious. He thinks this is funny that the US is threatening to colonize a foreign country.

I should point out that Elon Musk is a blatant colonialist. He doesn't hide it. In fact, back in 2020, before he bought Twitter, before it became his property, Elon Musk infamously tweeted in response to a critic who condemned Elon Musk for backing the far right coup in Bolivia under the Trump administration in 2019 that overthrew Bolivia's democratically-elected left wing president, Evo Morales. And Bolivia has large lithium reserves. So a person on Twitter criticized Musk and said, quote, "You know what wasn't in the best interest of the people? The US government organizing a coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia so you could get the lithium there." End quote. And then Musk responded saying, quote, "We will coup whoever we want. Deal with it." end quote. This is the world's richest oligarch [00:11:00] saying, Yeah, we'll organize a coup wherever we want. We'll overthrow any foreign government.

I mean, these people are colonialists. They don't believe in sovereignty. They don't believe in independence. They believe that the US empire has the supposed right to colonize any country they want and to install puppets and to take over their resources and their territory.

This is not isolationism. This is blatant colonialism.

Donald Trump’s New Manifest Destiny - WSJ Opinion: Potomac Watch Part 1 - Air Date 12-26-24

MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY: I tried to brace myself for anything, but this one really came out of the blue for me, particularly going after Panama.

I mean, the Canadian rhetoric is really just provocative. Obviously, Canadians have no interest in being part of the United States, and Trump is just blowing off steam.

On Panama, though, I think it's more troubling, because Panama is one of our few allies in the region at this point. I mean, so many countries have fallen to the hard left, and here we have an ally that runs a going concern very well, the Panama Canal, and [00:12:00] all of a sudden he's picking a fight with Panama. And it doesn't make much sense. I think he might at some point realize it doesn't make much sense, but he's not going to back down. He's not going to turn around and say, "Oh, I was wrong." So we're going to have to go through some kind of a kabuki dance between Panama and the United States until he can find his way out of this one.

PAUL GIGOT - HOST, POTOMAC WATCH: Well, for listeners who are as old as I am, they can probably remember the debates of the 1970s over whether or not the US should cede the Panama Canal in a treaty to Panama. There's a great debate on the American right about it. Ronald Reagan said, "No, don't turn it over." Bill Buckley and some others, William F. Buckley Jr. said, "Well, it makes sense to do it, because there's no reason we should have to control it. It can be run well enough by Panama." And Jimmy Carter managed to negotiate a treaty and it passed the Senate, ratified by the Senate 68 to 32, which is only one vote above the two-thirds majority needed. And pretty much it's been not a huge issue ever [00:13:00] since. Let's listen to Trump talking last weekend about how he sees the Canal now.

DONALD TRUMP: You got to treat us fairly and they haven't treated us fairly. If the principles, both moral and legal, of this magnanimous gesture of giving are not followed, then we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to the United States of America in full, quickly and without question. I'm not going to stand for it. So to the officials of Panama, please be guided accordingly.

PAUL GIGOT - HOST, POTOMAC WATCH: The Panamanian President, José Raúl Mulino, quickly said, "We have no intention of turning the Canal over," and said Panama would defend his interest. And to which Donald Trump replied on Truth Social, "We'll see about that." That sounds like a threat. Mary, what do you think? First of all, does Trump have a fair complaint about the fees?

MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY: I think he does not. And I'll start with the fact that all ships and vessels, no matter [00:14:00] the flag they fly, pay the same fees, and those are based on tonnage and type of vessel. They have nothing to do with singling out the Americans to gouge them. The one problem he may be hearing about from shippers is that the drought, which was an El Nino drought, which went from June of 2023 until about the middle of this year, caused the big lake, Gatun Lake, to go down in volume, and that meant there was less water and they could bring fewer ships through the Canal. So they ended up creating something they called the Express Pass, which was an online bidding system for ships that wanted to go faster through the Canal, they could pay more, and other ones who didn't want to pay that would have to wait longer. And obviously, that made a lot of shippers unhappy, but it also wasn't good for the Canal. They lost an estimated $1 billion in revenue during that time. So, they have no incentive to slow down the ships or raise the [00:15:00] prices, because they give up their own interests as well. But that was just a reality of nature. They also have to run the Canal, which means not only keeping it maintained all the time, but they have to also put investments into capital expenditures. And one of the strategies they're thinking about is building new reservoirs to deal with this uncertainty of water supply. And if they do that, it's going to cost them probably more than $2 billion. So again, the Canal Authority is run like a business and it's an autonomous institution, and they have to care about their bottom line. So this idea that they're somehow able to gouge Americans with no regard to the outcomes is just blatantly false.

PAUL GIGOT - HOST, POTOMAC WATCH: Trump also suggested in a Truth Social post, I guess, that the US somehow investing billions of dollars in this. Is that true?

MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY: No, it's not true. The Canal Authority has to basically run out of its revenue, not just regular maintenance, but [00:16:00] also expenditure. So the third set of locks, which started in 2016, was completely done by the Canal Authority, and they issued bonds which were backed by the Panamanian government, but they were Canal Authority bonds, and so they did the whole thing on their own to create those set of three new locks. It is true that the United States widened the Canal before the handover, they put money into widening the Canal.

PAUL GIGOT - HOST, POTOMAC WATCH: That was in 1999, was the handover.

MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY: Right. So it was before that it was widened. But since it's been handed over, the Panama Canal Authority has been the only one responsible for maintaining and investing in the Canal.

PAUL GIGOT - HOST, POTOMAC WATCH: If the fees aren't a problem, if management here has been run more or less like a business, although it does kick any excess profits to the government of Panama, there's some suggestion that Trump is worried about China and its influence there in the Canal. Of course, China has expanding its influence throughout [00:17:00] the Americas, Latin America in particular, and Trump suggested that Chinese soldiers are helping to operate this? It's the first I've heard of that.

MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY: Again, not true. And actually the Panamanian President answered that on either Christmas day, or the day after Christmas, saying that there are no Chinese soldiers in the Canal zone. There are five cargo ports and two of them are run by a subsidiary of Hutchison Whampoa, which is a Hong Kong company traded on the Hong Kong stock exchange. The other three ports are run by US, Taiwanese and Singaporean commercial interests. But there are no soldiers in the Canal zone from China.

PAUL GIGOT - HOST, POTOMAC WATCH: Is China, what about overall Chinese influence, right? Hutchison Whampoa is a Hong Kong based company. It used to be an old British trading company, and now local, I believe the shareholders are Chinese, Hong Kong Chinese, and Hong Kong does answer now to China. How much should we be worried about that?

MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY: Well, I [00:18:00] think it's something we definitely have to keep an eye on, because as you say, the influence of Beijing over Hong Kong and the so-called private sector in Hong Kong is something to worry about. But when I look at that problem and I think, okay, if that is a threat, what Trump should want to do is bring the Panamanian government closer to him and try to work with them to ensure security in the Canal. Instead, he's alienating a center right government, and Venezuela is sticking up for Panama right now. So I don't even understand the chess game. I mean, if he's trying to outsmart them, he's not doing a very good job.

PAUL GIGOT - HOST, POTOMAC WATCH: Well, so that's an important point, which is the bullying here plays into the old El Norte, gringo imperialist, and the left in Latin America will make a lot of hay out of this. But what's the goal here? I mean, does Trump want to renegotiate the treaty? If he does, of course he'd have to [00:19:00] resubmit it to the US Senate. Does he want to lean on Panama to be able to make sure that it gets rid of those two Hutchison Whampoa concessions? And how's he going to do that if Panamanians say, "Well, you can't bully us, we're not going to cooperate," then what's his leverage?

MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY: Well, I'm suspecting that someone complained to him about the price of getting through the Canal, and he took that complaint and he decided to tweet about it, and complain about it to the public. What I suspect will happen here is that he will say that he forced a negotiation, not unlike what he did with Mexico in the North American Free Trade Agreement. In the end, what he renegotiated with Mexico was very, very similar to the North American Free Trade Agreement, but he declared victory and went home. So if he forces Panama to make some concession, who knows what it is, he will say that he won.

Why Elon Musk interferes in politics around the world - DW News - Air Date 1-3-25

DW HOST 3: Musk is supporting the far right [00:20:00] AFD party, even though it seems on par with Trump. Just a very thin look at their policies, that they are against bilateral partnerships with the USA, or even promoting electric vehicles. With that in mind, what do you think it is that Musk wants from this relationship?

JONATHAN KATZ: Yeah, well, one: Mr. Musk is not shy about endorsing or getting into the mix of the political fray. Particularly in US-allied countries like the UK and Germany, we've seen him try to play a role in Brazil and elsewhere globally. And he has reportedly and engaged with autocrats as well, like Mr. Putin and others. So, this is not a surprise that he's engaged. But one thing is certain, he does have the ear of incoming president Trump. And it's somebody that foreign leaders will certainly have to figure out how to deal with. But his interests in far right political [00:21:00] parties in Europe and globally is quite disconcerting. But it's pretty much par for the course from what role he took in the Trump reelection campaign that just passed as well. So I think Germany is getting a little bit of a dose of what the United States just went through, but other countries as well, including partners and allies.

DW HOST 3: Jonathan, you mentioned quite rightly what he got out of the US election campaign. Looking at what he achieved in the US, do you at least understand tactically why he would at least try and find another political ally in Germany, home to a very slowly adapting car industry?

JONATHAN KATZ: Yeah, I think there's the Elon Musk, his own economic interests and what he is seeking with partners globally. And then there's one that's playing this role with President Trump in his right ear or left ear. And I think the two don't really meet together in the middle. And he'll have to make a choice in 17 days when President-elect [00:22:00] Trump is inaugurated, about what role he's going to play. Cause you can only imagine, with President Trump's seeking to end the conflict in Ukraine, trying to address challenges posed by China and other issues globally, that you can't have somebody like Mr. Musk, who's traveling around the world creating problems for partners and allies that you're going to need to solve problems. So I think what you're seeing is that Musk has his own interests, but then there's the interest of the United States, and I think these things are going to come head to head. And so Mr. Trump will have to make a decision what role he wants Musk to play.

DW HOST 3: Jonathan, do you think he can achieve the same amount of clout in Germany or Europe as he enjoys in the U. S.? Is the German system really built to withstand a billionaire who seeks influence?

JONATHAN KATZ: When you look at polling numbers in Germany for the upcoming election in February, you've seen a very steady state in terms of polling. I think it's very unlikely in Germany, specifically, that [00:23:00] Musk will have the outsized influence he may have had in the U. S. election, and that's even debatable as well, in terms of his overall impact. And so I think it's really, Germany is a strong democracy. Citizens in the country have been through multiple elections before. There's strong politicians, political parties. Some may even like to see conflict with somebody like Musk publicly to gain more attention and to show a contrast between other political parties. But when we look at the numbers, I don't think this will have a huge impact on the outcome of the German election. AFD is unlikely to come to power in any which way based on the polling that we're seeing, and I don't think Musk will be able to push that polling number high enough for AFD to take power.

Is Musk Flirting With Fascism? - Politics unpacked - Air Date 1-3-24

ED VAIZEY - HOST, POLITICS UNPACKED: Let's talk about a man for whom consensus and cooperation and harmony is at the centre of his entire being. I'm referring, of course, to Elon Musk. He was spraying [00:24:00] more attacks against the government last night. Michael, a former Washington correspondent as well. It's got all sorts of things going on here in terms of Elon Musk's relationship with British politics and the UK's relationship with the US. It's the most, I would almost say, unprecedented thing we've seen. We've had people, obviously, like, Kennedy's father backing the Nazis and so on, you have kind of people with extreme views in America who have big impacts on European politics, but this is crazy.

MICHAEL BINYON: Well, we've never seen something like this before, particularly coming from somebody who thinks he is very well placed and close to Trump—I wonder how long that will last—but also is the world's richest billionaire, the richest man in the world.

ED VAIZEY - HOST, POLITICS UNPACKED: I think he's the richest man that's ever lived.

MICHAEL BINYON: It's just mind boggling, more money than most countries have in their national budgets. In fact, more than almost anywhere outside, the Western world or China. But one wonders, why is he doing this? What is his aim? Is he trying to be a sort of [00:25:00] global statesman? Is he just shooting his mouth off to glorify himself? He's actually said things that are going to be deeply embarrassing to the Trump administration, particularly what he said about the AFD, the far right party in Germany, which has caused anger and fury there and doesn't really help anybody.

ED VAIZEY - HOST, POLITICS UNPACKED: And the vice president, JD Vance, in fact, was invited to comment and said, I don't comment on foreign elections.

MICHAEL BINYON: Well, he is quite right, and sensible, and one wonders, What's the point of this? He does seem to have it in for Britain in a fairly old way. His father apparently was from Liverpool, so why is he so furious with Britain? I don't know. And particularly, ad hominem attacks on Starmer, accusing him of not pursuing the grooming scandals that went on around Rochdale and Northern England about a decade ago or so. It's just absurd. Why is he trying to bring discredit on the Labour government. What is it? And at the same time praising a convicted criminal, Tommy Robinson, who's in prison, saying that he should be [00:26:00] released, a far right extremist. You begin to wonder, is he flirting with fascism?

ED VAIZEY - HOST, POLITICS UNPACKED: Well, Gabby, Michael asked the question, What is Elon Musk up to? There's part of me that thinks this is a man, a very powerful and rich man, with an extremely warped sense of humor. Because we all rise to this. He says some things which are, in my view, utterly unacceptable, particularly the stuff about Tommy Robinson and the AFD. They are unacceptable. But a man that wealthy, who frankly doesn't have to give a fig about pretty much anything, maybe he's just doing it for the giggles, in a kind of perverse and weird way. Is there a strategy here?

GABY HINSLIFF: I think it looks to me like a sort of form of trolling on steroids, really, as if that form had to become its owner, almost. He, Musk acts like, it's like a kind of giant spinning Catherine wheel, that just goes round and round and round, sparks flying off in all directions, setting fire to things, almost at random. [00:27:00] And it's all about engagement, it's all about feeling. Is there something cultish about the way a lot of X users or certainly blue check users, the ones who've signed up to the whole monetizing package, think of Musk, it's almost, there's this kind of cult of reverence towards him and this feeling that I think he clearly enjoys being leader of the gang. There's something about Musk that wants to be, has always been seen as a bit of an oddball, has always been seen as dislikable, doesn't quite enjoy, has all this money but doesn't enjoy the respect for it, I think, or the kind of status that you perhaps might expect for that position of wealth and power from other people in business and kind of wants to be liked by someone and has found this crowd that does latch on to his every word and does go with everything he says.

I think the question for the British government in handling Musk, what do they do about Musk, is how long is this actually [00:28:00] going to last? And, Michael hinted at this. You've got two ginormous egos in a bag when you've got Trump and Musk in the same room, with very different agendas. Musk [has] not always been MAGA, he's not a true believer, he's criticised Trump in the past, you feel like he's got his own agenda, he's in it for commercial reasons, gives him a lot of protection to be allied with the US president, makes regulators in Europe think twice about going after him. So, how long does that partnership... but isn't really a partnership? How long can that last without one or other of them trying to set fire to the other?, is the kind of question. And in that case, to some extent, I think the British government is sitting back waiting to see how that plays out.

ED VAIZEY - HOST, POLITICS UNPACKED: I think that's right. Donald Trump has already commented on whether Elon is after his job. And the fact that, in theory, Donald Trump will step down after this presidency, it's very telling that he felt compelled to do it. And I think it gave a kind of insight into what is going on [00:29:00] in Trump's head as much as Elon Musk's head. Clearly, obviously Elon Musk. is going to have a big impact on British politics if he carries on in the way he is. There is this talk of this 80 million pounds to Reform, and there's also potentially the kind of idea that Trump and Musk together normalise what Reform is going on about. Part of me thinks that if he does give the money to Reform, there'll be a kind of Great British backlash to foreign interference. What do you think, Michael?

MICHAEL BINYON: I think I agree entirely. I think it will look very tainted. It will look pretty shabby. And I think Farage would be very wise to keep his distance from that, particularly if Musk starts shouting about all sorts of other things, sounding off his opinions on, well, the far right in general. And equating Reform with some quasi-fascistic kind of ideas that he seems to be spouting. That's not where Reform want to go. They want to pull the mainstream-right over to them. They don't want the far-right. They don't want the nutters as part of [00:30:00] their image.

I also think there's, questions of law. Would they be allowed to accept such a massive donation? How would they declare it? How would it be processed through the normal channels. I actually, I don't think that's going to happen. But, yeah, he is trying to interfere. And one wonders why? It'd be interesting to see whether Lord Mandelson as the new ambassador in Washington, who's got this delicate task of trying to sweet talk Trump and make Labour appear the loyal friends of America that Britain always has been, how he's going to finesse the relations with Farage and also with obviously Musk.

ED VAIZEY - HOST, POLITICS UNPACKED: Absolutely. I mean, Gaby, if it wasn't so impactful and important to all our lives in some ways, what is going on is completely fascinating. It's interesting, we do endless opinion polls: Labour's up, Labour's down. We should be doing opinion polls about Elon Musk.

GABY HINSLIFF: Someone has, that's the interesting thing. And actually, his approval [00:31:00] ratings in the UK have fallen over the time that he's been in charge of Musk because people have reacted I think before all this, if you people thought of Elon Musk, they maybe thought about, you might have had some admiration for what he'd done with Tesla, or you might have thought he was doing interesting things with rockets, or you might have thought of him as a kind of tech pioneer and a bit mad, but, eccentric boffin. And now he's someone who's actively promoting fascism across Europe, and that's how he's primarily in people's heads. I think it's interesting this, I would suspect over time there's going to be a backlash, a commercial backlash against Tesla, against Musk, but it's, Do you really want to be seen driving something...?

ED VAIZEY - HOST, POLITICS UNPACKED: Well, it is interesting that Tesla sales have declined. It may be because the Chinese are producing more cheap electric vehicles. It's very interesting the texts that are coming into the show. A lot of people saying we're getting it wrong about Musk and Musk represents mainstream opinion. But in terms of opinion polls, Gaby, [00:32:00] I was thinking, there should be an opinion poll now about if Musk gives Reform money, will it make you more or less likely to vote Reform? I'd be fascinated to see what that came out with.

GABY HINSLIFF: I guess it doesn't have a huge propensity on Reform voters because that's not, primarily, what's in their heads when they're choosing whether to revote [sic] Reform or Tory. I think probably this is more of a calculation, as Michael said, for Reform about what kind of strings come attached with that kind of money. And the sums that have been talked about, a hundred million pounds, I don't think any party should be getting a hundred million pounds from one single source. I don't care if that single source is Mother Teresa, not that she obviously has a hundred million pounds, that's not the point. You shouldn't be that dependent on one person because that person then effectively...

ED VAIZEY - HOST, POLITICS UNPACKED: [overtalking] Oh yes, well as the Tories found out to a certain extent... yeah, they...

Imperialist Fantasy: Historian Greg Grandin on Trump Threat to Retake Panama Canal, Invade Mexico - Democracy Now! - Air Date 12-27-24

GREG GRANDIN: This is classic Trump. There’s no way the United States is going to fill out greater America. This is red meat for the Trump base. If you go to [00:33:00] Twitter, you can see all of these MAGA maps in which greater America is filled out from Greenland down to Panama. And it’s a fantasy. There is not going to be a kind of return to territorial annexation in any significant way. I mean, the United States is not Israel, right? In Israel, there is a Greater Israel actually being created. In the United States, it exists more in the kind of fantasy life of his rank and file. And I think that some of that is what is going on.

And let me just add, it’s Panama. Panama is one of the largest offshore money-laundering shelters in the world. By some accounts, some $7 trillion exists in these offshore accounts. And if he really wanted to make America great again, he would go after not the Panama Canal or worry about immigration, he would shut down — he would shut down the [00:34:00] ability of these offshore financing to function, and he would tax that money. And then we’d have high-speed trains. We’d have healthcare. We’d have a nation, as he likes to put it.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Well, just as we talked about Greenland and China and the U.S. interest in Greenland, what about the Panama Canal and the possibility of a larger canal being built through Nicaragua, and the role of China versus the U.S.? Is Trump seeing it in this context?

GREG GRANDIN: I think, I mean, obviously, Latin America and its relationship with China is always a geostrategic concern for national security types. And it has been, and has been for quite a while. And in terms of the Panama Canal in particular, there are alternatives on the table. [00:35:00] Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico has talked about creating an interoceanic corridor, a combination of roadways and trains, in that thin kind of waistband area of Mexico, that would compete with the Panama Canal. Nicaragua, of course, is run by a degraded version of the Sandinistas, but they’ve been in talks with China. But this has been going on for decades, so it’s unclear how real they were.

The thing about building alternatives to the Panama Canal is that this happens whenever — it’s been going on for quite a long time, for at least a century, because, of course, the problem with the Panama Canal, it’s not a — it’s a lock canal. It’s not a sea level canal. So it takes a long time to fill up the locks, bring them down, bring the ship across. And that’s [00:36:00] why the tariffs are so high. That’s why the fees are so high. It’s an enormous operation. So there’s been a dream of a sea level canal for over a century. And maybe the will there is to build it either in Mexico or Nicaragua, but, you know, it’s not anything I would hold my breath for, waiting to see happen. We’d probably have high-speed trains in the United States before that happened.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Interestingly, Trump’s pick for the ambassador to Mexico is Ron Johnson, whose military career began in Panama. In the '80s, he was stationed in El Salvador as one of 55 U.S. military advisers as the Salvadoran military and paramilitaries were killing thousands of Salvadorans. He was a specialist in covert operations, became a member of the elite U.S. Special Forces, informally known as the Green Berets, a highly selective unit that also included figures like Trump's pick for national security adviser, [00:37:00] Michael Waltz. He has pushed for the U.S. also invading Mexico, Greg, as we wrap up.

GREG GRANDIN: Yeah, these are bad signs. Ron Johnson just brings us back to Iran-Contra, I mean, right into the heart of it. I mean, he was one of the so-called 55 military advisers on the ground in El Salvador while the United States was helping El Salvador build a death squad state. I mean, he’s got — and then he had a career in the Green Berets and onward to the CIA. He’s been — you know, he’s seen some things. And to name him ambassador to Mexico is, again, sending a strong signal.

Again, Mexico is Mexico. It’s stubborn. It has a strong commitment to sovereignty. On the other hand, it’s poor, and it needs capital, and the United States is the largest trading partner. Claudia Sheinbaum seems to be very astute [00:38:00] in not — you know, where we see obsequiousness on the part of Justin Trudeau, Sheinbaum has come back quite strongly, at least rhetorically, on Trump. But on the other hand, Mexico has cooperated with the United States on all sorts of things having to do with migration, and including helping the United States enforce a hard line on migration. I imagine that’s going to continue, no matter what the rhetoric of Sheinbaum. But Mexico does have a — has a much stronger commitment to the idea of sovereignty because of the history, where, you know, you started talking about territorial annexation. I mean, a third of Mexico was lost to the United States. Texas was lost to the United States. The United States almost took the Yucatán in 1948 along with Texas — 1848, along with Texas. So, that history is there.

And, of course, the people that Trump has put in, Marco Rubio as secretary of state, [00:39:00] Ron Johnson, Mike Waltz, I mean, they might as well move the State Department down to Mar-a-Lago or down to Tampa. I mean, it’s basically a Florida-based operation, which suggests that we’re going to see a lot of interesting rivalries or a lot of interesting conflicts with Latin America, which will not necessarily be — which might reveal some big cleavages, because one of the things that the Trump people want to do is build an alliance with right-wing Latin Americans. And you ain’t gonna do that by threatening to take back the Panama Canal.

The Weekender: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Destruction Part 1 - The Muckrake Political Podcast - Air Date 12-27-24

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Within these wild fantasies, what we're now watching is the liberal permission structures, including places like CNN, New York Times, The Washington Post, we're now watching them begin to take Trump's rantings and treat them seriously.

And in that moment, what happens is that it activates [00:40:00] fantasies of American exceptionalism, and I want you to think about what America has felt like over the past half century or so, and it's been a depressive period because America has gone into decline as neoliberal globalism has taken over the consensus. And it's been what we're looking at now is a moment of manic imagination.

And this is one of the reasons, and Nick and I have talked about this particularly in our discussions about the movement from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan, and the movement from the New Deal consensus to the neoliberal consensus. Just by going out and talking about American exceptionalism and its morning in America, it activates one of the defining frameworks that made [00:41:00] America such an aggressive and destructive nation.

This also includes White supremacy, chauvinistic nationalism, which basically says, of course, that the universe, it favors us. And as a result, we should be able to do whatever it is that we want to do. And it creates this illusion and delusion that is able to be taken advantage of by the wealth class, as they want to gather resources and further their extraction of wealth and consolidation of wealth.

Here, a lot of this has to do with climate change, the fact that we are inching up on an, an existential crisis that none of the shareholders and none of the wealth class actually want to take care of, because, of course, they have [00:42:00] created the situation in which climate change has grown as an existential threat. But also all of their incentives are based on cashing in on those problems.

So, because disaster capitalism means that this is going to take place unless something radical changes and shifts, what we have now is a mad dash to go ahead and gobble up as much stuff as humanly possible. So, of course, Panama Canal is about controlling access to shipping and resources. But when it comes to Canada and Greenland, there are a lot of people on the right who want to go ahead and gobble up some of that colder territory so that when things get warmer, America has more access to some of the more temperate places, as well as access to more resources and more labor.

Mexico is... man, [00:43:00] I got to tell you, I feel a lot of energy growing in terms of an American excursion, a limited war with Mexico, whatever they want to call that, which would include, as I talked about on a prior episode, teaming up with elements within Mexico to fight the drug cartels who are armed with American weapons and money to go ahead and take over a large part of their production and distribution.

I could see this stuff happening. And one of the reasons it could happen is because when Trump says this shit and when they push this absolute madness, like we should be looking at this and saying... this is the type of stuff that if you heard people screaming about it in a grocery store, you would get as far away from them as humanly [00:44:00] possible. But because Donald Trump has won the presidency a second time, and because the American foundation relies on normalizing power, particularly at that level, we now have to grant it permission. And places like CNN talking about this, and anybody listening to the Muckrake podcast knows that this is absolute horseshit. This is crazy horseshit. But a lot of liberal America, which is starting to normalize Donald Trump, and is starting to just move further and further to the right, while also being granted permission by places like CNN, even, MSNBC and the Democratic Party and a lot of these liberal platforms like the New York Times and the Washington Post, and The Atlantic for that matter, they're getting permission from them to go ahead and accept this stuff.[00:45:00]

And so as that happens, it becomes more possible. Reality starts to shift. It becomes more malleable. And for anybody who questions whether or not this is possible, all you have to do is go back to the beginning of the 21st century. And, where George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the neoconservatives, who have all come under the umbrella of the Democratic Party now, had widespread support by all these liberal structures. Blame for the invasion of Iraq and the war on terror, it now largely goes to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, even as they've been laundered of any guilt of killing millions of people and raiding America's resources and then destroying the economy. It's just become this [00:46:00] blob, like we don't really talk about like how it happened or how it took place. We don't talk about the fact that the New York Times was one of the leading drivers towards that, or that after September 11th, it wasn't just Fox News that was pushing for this aggression. It was CNN. It was MSNBC. It was the Democratic Party.

So, that moment of mass psychosis, that is the environment that, if we're not careful, we are going to find ourselves in once more. And that environment, it only fuels this stuff. It only makes it more and more possible that it's going to happen, and quite frankly, and I want people to understand this, there is a relief among many people, even among liberals, there is a [00:47:00] relief when a strongman and chauvinistic policies start to take over.

Nobody wants to live in a declining country. Nobody wants to think about how the country that has defined them as, people and define their realities, no one wants to live in this sinking ship. So as a result, it suddenly becomes very exciting for some, the idea that we're going to have a reinvigoration of the American project.

This is one of the reasons why Ronald Reagan was able to win two terms so convincingly and why the Democratic Party was more than happy to become more conservative and more and more dedicated to neoliberalism.

Note from the Editor on the baby-brained ideas of the far right

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips starting with the Geopolitical Economy Report exposing the farce that Trump is an isolationist. Wall Street Journal Opinion discussed Trump's play for the Panama Canal. [00:48:00] DW News looked at Elon Musk attempting to hold sway for the far right in Germany. Politics unpacked discussed Elon Musk flirting with fascism. Democracy Now! spoke with Greg Grandin about Trump's imperialist fantasies. And The Muckrake Political Podcast discussed the nature of media to normalize the radical ideas Trump is floating.

And those were just the top takes. There's a lot more in the deeper dives section, But first a reminder that this show is produced with the support of our members who get access to bonus episodes and enjoy all of our shows without ads to support all of our work and have those bonus episodes delivered seamlessly to the new members only podcast feed that you'll receive. Sign up to support the show at bestoftheleft.com/support. There's a link in the show notes, through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple podcast app. As always, if regular membership isn't in the cards for you, shoot me an email requesting a financial hardship membership, because we don't let a lack of funds stand in the way of hearing more information.

Now we're trying something new and offering you the opportunity to submit your [00:49:00] comments or questions on upcoming topics. Since it takes us a bit of time to do all of the research and get everything together, I can actually give you a heads up about what's coming. And so you can potentially join the conversation as it's happening rather than after the fact. So next up, we are working on the topic of the so-called 'broligarchy' of super wealthy Silicon Valley and influencer bros making waves in the MAGA movement. Also, we have just started talking about the legacy of Jimmy Carter with a focus on where things stand today on some of his top issues, such as the environment, human rights, and housing for the poor. So, get your comments or questions in now for either of those topics for a chance to be included in the show. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at 202-999-3991, or simply email me to [email protected].

As for today's topic, I just have to mention a recurring issue for me. I feel like this happens a lot, but I first noticed it back in about 2009 during the debate over [00:50:00] healthcare, as Obama was pushing for reforms and listening to the counter-arguments against government healthcare. There was a lot of talk about the poor, helpless employees of the private health insurance companies who would be at risk of losing their jobs. The reason being, government administered, single payer insurance would be so much simpler and streamlined that billions of wasted dollars and thousands of unnecessary bullshit jobs could be removed from the system. For the individuals who may need to look for new jobs, I have compassion, but overall it seems like a small price to pay for such a massive benefit that would help everyone. Even those who just lost their jobs would at the very least. have health insurance coverage, something that can't be said now for people who find themselves unemployed. Hearing the conservative arguments about the need to save those wasteful jobs reminded me that I had had the very same thought when I was about [00:51:00] 10 years old. As a totally uninformed child, I'd heard that same piece of propaganda probably as part of a campaign against Hillary Clinton's healthcare reform proposals in the nineties. And I had been swayed by it. So, in 2009, I wondered if this is basically what right-wing beliefs are: ideas that make sense only to uninformed children. Well, this isn't only the second time, as I said, this happens a lot. But learning about Trump's approach to foreign policy has given me another flashback. As a child, I learned a collection of facts that I put together in a very logical way, I thought. I learned that the US had bought land from France in the Louisiana Purchase and from Russia when it bought Alaska. I also learned that the US was quite wealthy compared to other countries And had the general idea that, you know, the occasional civil war not [00:52:00] withstanding, countries more rarely go to war with themselves than with other countries.

So, I took all that information and asked, so why doesn't the US just keep buying more and more land, buy other countries, and make those countries part of the United States for the benefit of peace and stability?, I thought. So, a s a ten-year-old imperialist, I was at least doing it, I think, for humanitarian reasons. And I want to say, that it was pretty rock solid logic, for a child. But again, here we come to find that there are actually some on the far right, the president-elect included apparently, who have approximately the same grasp of the nature of the world, the people in it, and how they might feel about being colonized, as a child. So, it feels like this shouldn't be necessary to say, but it also seems like this needs to serve as a word of warning to [00:53:00] anyone who hears a conservative idea that sounds vaguely plausible. Just remember that their ideas are designed not necessarily by, but definitely for people with about a third grade understanding of any given issue. And they should be treated as such.

SECTION A: PANAMA

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now we'll continue to dive deeper on four topics today. Next up Section A: Panama, followed by Section B: Manifest Destiny, Section C: Elon Musk, and Section D: Trump 2.0.

FLASHBACK: President Jimmy Carter Holds Signing Event For The Panama Canal Treaty - Forbes Breaking News - Air Date 12-29-24

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: Mr. Secretary General and distinguished leaders from Throughout our own country and from throughout this hemisphere. First of all, I want to express my deep thanks to the leaders who come here from 27 nations in our own hemisphere 20 heads of state for this historic occasion. I'm proud to be here [00:54:00] as part of the largest group of heads of state ever assembled in the Hall of the Americas, Mr.

Secretary General. We are here to participate in the signing of treaties which will assure a peaceful and prosperous and secure future for an international waterway of great importance to us all. But the treaties do more than that. They mark the commitment of the United States to the belief that fairness and not force should lie at the heart of our dealings with the nations of the world.

If any agreement between two nations is to last, it must serve the best interests of both nations. The new treaties do that, and by guaranteeing the neutrality of the Panama Canal, the treaties also [00:55:00] serve the best interest of every nation that uses the canal. This agreement thus forms a new partnership to ensure that this vital waterway, so important to all of us, will continue to be well operated, safe, and open to shipping by all nations now and in the future.

Under these accords, Panama will play an increasingly important role in the operation and defense of the canal during the next 23 years. And after that, the United States will still be able to counter any threat to the canal's neutrality and openness for use. The members of the Organization of American States and all the members of the United Nations have a chance to subscribe to the permanent neutrality of the canal.

The Accords also give [00:56:00] Panama an important economic stake in the continued safe and efficient operation of the canal and make Panama a strong and interested party in the future success of the waterway. In the spirit of reciprocity, Suggested by the leaders at the Bogota Summit, the United States and Panama have agreed that any future sea level canal will be built in Panama and with the cooperation of the United States.

In this manner, the best interests of both our nations are linked and preserved into the future. Many of you seated at this table have made known for years through the organization of American states and through your own personal expressions of concern to my predecessors in the White House, your own strong [00:57:00] feelings about the Panama Canal Treaty of 1903.

That treaty, drafted in a world so different from ours today, has become an obstacle to better relations with Latin America. I thank each of you for the support and help that you and your countries have given during the long process of negotiation, which is now drawing to a close. This agreement has been negotiated over a period of 14 years under four presidents of the United States.

I'm proud to see President Ford here with us tonight.

And I'm also glad to see Mrs. Lyndon Johnson here with us tonight.

Many Secretaries of State have been involved in the negotiations. Dean Rusk can't be here. He's endorsed a treaty, but Secretary of State William Rogers is here. We're glad to have [00:58:00] you, sir.

And Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is here.

This has been a bipartisan effort, and it's extremely important for our country to stay unified in our commitment to the fairness, the symbol of equality, the mutual respect The preservation of the security and defense of our own nation and an exhibition of cooperation which sets a symbol that is important to us all before this assembly tonight and before the American people in the future.

This opens a new chapter in our relations with all nations of this hemisphere and it testifies to the maturity and the good Judgment and the decency of our people. This agreement is a symbol [00:59:00] for the world of the mutual respect and cooperation among all our nations. Thank you very much for your help in making this happen.

The Rise and Fall of the Panama Canal - Code Switch - Air Date 4-17-24

CRISTINA HENRIQUEZ: What was easiest to find out, by far and away, was how the United States felt about the canal and what it was like for Americans to be there. That is very well documented. I mean, there was a newspaper called The Canal Record, which was sort of an indispensable source material for me because it was created specifically to document every new development of the canal construction, right? And it had everything in there from, like, how many cubic yards had been dug in a certain week to all the new clubs that were being formed, the play that the YMCA was putting on in the Canal Zone, like, all of the new things that this commissary in this particular town now stocked [01:00:00] as of this date, the train schedules. Like, it was every part of life in the Canal Zone for white Americans.

So then I was looking for, what was life like for Panamanians? You know, being half Panamanian myself, I wanted to understand what it was like to live through this time. One of the interesting things that I learned fairly early on, because I kind of came into it assuming that Panamanians had worked on the canal themselves.

GENE DEMBY - HOST, CODE SWITCH: Yes, that's what I assumed, too.

CRISTINA HENRIQUEZ: And I was disabused of that notion very quickly.

GENE DEMBY - HOST, CODE SWITCH: Yeah. That was one of the most surprising things, like, oh, yeah, this is not - there is an army of brown people here...

CRISTINA HENRIQUEZ: Yes.

GENE DEMBY - HOST, CODE SWITCH: ...But they are not necessarily Panamanian. That was really surprising.

CRISTINA HENRIQUEZ: Yeah. I mean, of - the reports vary, but 50,000 people who were on the, like, workforce at the canal, 357 were Panamanian.

GENE DEMBY - HOST, CODE SWITCH: Wow.

CRISTINA HENRIQUEZ: Right?

GENE DEMBY - HOST, CODE SWITCH: So you're talking, like, less than a percent, like, a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny...

CRISTINA HENRIQUEZ: Yeah.

GENE DEMBY - HOST, CODE SWITCH: Yeah.

CRISTINA HENRIQUEZ: Like, [01:01:00] minuscule. And I was like, well - so this begged the question for me of, like, why, first of all, right?

GENE DEMBY - HOST, CODE SWITCH: Mm-hmm.

CRISTINA HENRIQUEZ: Some of it was a feeling that Panamanians were indolent, lazy. There's a quote from a U.S. congressman who's unidentified, but it's in a report from William Sands, who was a diplomat, and he - the quote is, "these people are of no more use than mosquitoes and buzzards. They ought all to be exterminated all together."

GENE DEMBY - HOST, CODE SWITCH: Whoa.

CRISTINA HENRIQUEZ: Yeah. I mean, so the feeling toward Panamanians was not one that was very positive.

GENE DEMBY - HOST, CODE SWITCH: Right.

CRISTINA HENRIQUEZ: Then there's also reports, oh, well, there weren't enough people in Panama; they didn't have actually enough of a population to draw from, which was also true; and they didn't speak English, which was also true in many cases. So if the United States were going to be the ones who were the foremans running the show, they needed people under them who could [01:02:00] understand when they were giving orders in English.

GENE DEMBY - HOST, CODE SWITCH: Right.

CRISTINA HENRIQUEZ: OK, so fine. Now I understood Panamanians didn't work on the canal, but I also still just wanted to understand - this is happening in their country. It's the Panama Canal.

GENE DEMBY - HOST, CODE SWITCH: Right.

CRISTINA HENRIQUEZ: So what is it like to live through a time when your country is being actually, you know, like, cut in half? And there was not a lot of material on that, and I found myself in a position where I was just basically forced to imagine it, which is - you know, that's what - the job of a novelist. I'm imagining other people's lives all of the time. But, yeah. I mean, I understood that there were sort of some people in Panama who were interested in the canal happening. They thought it would benefit Panama in the end. There were equally just as many people who were very suspicious of the United States coming in and building this canal, who didn't want to attach themselves [01:03:00] to this kind of world power in this dependent way. And so I just wanted to try to represent both of those sides a little bit, which you see through Omar, who is the 17-year-old boy.

GENE DEMBY - HOST, CODE SWITCH: And Francisco.

CRISTINA HENRIQUEZ: Yeah. And then Francisco, who's the opposite side of that.

GENE DEMBY - HOST, CODE SWITCH: Because that's one of the central conflicts in this book - right? - between Francisco and Omar. Francisco is a fisherman. He's a widower, and he absolutely detests the canal. He calls it La Boca because he sees it as this, like, gaping, rapacious mouth that the Americans will use to swallow up Panama. But Omar is his teenage son, and he's drawn to the canal, drawn to the prospect of working there, mostly because - the way you write him is he's bored with his life, And he sees it as an opportunity to do something bigger. And so this giant cleave in the land has run a giant cleave in this family. Did you find a lot of those divides in your research?

CRISTINA HENRIQUEZ: I mean, I found some. I found enough to be able to feel confident that I could write these characters and that both of them would [01:04:00] speak to a certain kind of perspective from that moment, right? I mean, I think for - in Omar's case, he's bored. And he's also just very lonely.

GENE DEMBY - HOST, CODE SWITCH: Yeah.

CRISTINA HENRIQUEZ: He's grown up in this house kind of at the outskirts of the city. And it's only been he and his father for all of his life. And he just wants to be part of something. And this happens to be the biggest something in the world at that moment. And so, you know, he wants to go and join it, much to the dismay of his father, who calls it the mouth - believes that it's going to swallow Panama. But, yeah, I felt like I needed to represent both sides of that through the Panamanian story.

But the other thread was the West Indians who came. And one day, I stumbled upon this trove. It was this most amazing discovery because in 1963, the Isthmian Canal Commission sponsored a contest where they asked people to submit letters [01:05:00] recollecting their time on the Canal Zone, like, during the construction. And they are the most amazing sort of insightful view into what it was like for these men as they were working on the canal. And it's in their voices. You can hear them coming off the page. You understand something about their whole lives. They talk about the reasons that they had come - the reasons that, in some cases, they stayed, because by 1963, you know, some of them were still in Panama and writing these histories. That was, like, a sort of turning-point moment for me in terms of the research and being able to understand the real, like, human element behind the canal.

GENE DEMBY - HOST, CODE SWITCH: Was there a specific story that, like, really jumped out to you that you remember?

CRISTINA HENRIQUEZ: I mean, there were specific lines, right? Like, it was amazing to me how many of the people didn't complain about the conditions. Like, they stated them very matter-of-factly. And then they would say - they would end their letters with things [01:06:00] like, you know, thank God to the Americans for the Panama Canal. And it's, like, reading that and then knowing, on the other hand, like, the number of deaths that had occurred - right? - and, like, the kind of danger that they were in at all times and that specter of death that was haunting them, that was shadowing them the whole time that they were working on the canal, and yet, to come out of that feeling, like, thank God to the Americans for the Panama Canal was always sort of amazing to me to see.

There was a line that is often quoted, but I found it very poetic and arresting, where one of the men says, the flesh of men flew in the air like birds many days.

But that just - it's like, OK, as a novelist, to read a line like that and to understand what they were up against, you know, and the reality day to day of, like - there was another one who said, one day, you see, like, Johnny in the morning; in the afternoon, he's dead. Like - it's like, that was how quick that things were [01:07:00] happening. Every day on the line, you would be friends with someone, and then they were gone.

And I think coming face to face with that as a novelist and then trying to, like, situate those characters within that context and think about then what it's like to wake up every day, walk down that mountainside and do this work for something that isn't even your country - for the benefit - like, many of them believed they were doing it for the benefit of all humanity. To have that kind of purpose and drive and doing this thing that was very dangerous and could cost you your life pretty easily

Mexico expresses support for Panama following threats from Trump - DW News - Air Date 12-23-24

DW NEWS: There are several issues relating to the canal. There's, of course I suppose, Trump's major worry, which is the Chinese management of two ports at canal entrances. Could you help us understand the significance of this Chinese presence, especially during what's coming, Trump's presidency?

MARIA BOZMOSKI: Panama [01:08:00] has a very close relationship with a number of countries, not just the United States, not just China. Panama was one of the first, was the first, actually, country in Latin America to join the Belt and Road Initiative back in 2018. And China does manage, does operate a Hong Kong subsidiary company, operates two of the ports in the Panama Canal, but I think it's important to remind the audience that the Panama Canal itself is operated by the Panamanian Canal Authority, which is an independent government agency, actually. It has a governing board of directors. The Panama Canal administrator is elected such that he or she overlaps administrations. So there's some sort of continuity despite whoever is president in Panama. And it's operated by [01:09:00] Panamanians, Panamanian engineers. And it has been the case for many years.

We see with the appointments that the incoming Trump administration has made that at the state department, it'll be very Latin America focused. And we're starting to see where that will go in the next four years. The secretary of state nominee, Marco Rubio, has a long career in the Senate, and is very much focused on Latin America.

DW NEWS: Right. Just wondering, as time goes on, what options does Panama have to address this issue? Because, of course, there is a seeming confrontational stance from the U. S., but it also depends very heavily on this for its economy.

MARIA BOZMOSKI: Yeah, like I said, Panama is a very open economy. It's an economy that has relations with a number of countries, not just the United States, not just China. The United States is actually the number one customer that goes through the Panama Canal. But the Panama [01:10:00] economy itself is focused on services. It's an economy that is focused on that industry, the services industry, the tourism industry, the logistics industry.

And I appreciate that the Panama canal is now making headlines around the world because it is such a vital piece of global infrastructure, around 6 percent of global trade goes through the Panama canal. And recently we've seen with the droughts and then the heavy rains that the canal has been having challenges. And so it is time to start to think holistically about how to optimize the operations of the canal, because the traffic that goes through there is so vital to global trade.

HOST, DW NEWS: Well, let's get the view from Panama, from Annette Planells, the publisher and president of La Prensa, joining us today from Panama City.

Welcome. Tell us, first of all, what kind of reaction there's been there [01:11:00] to Trump's sudden interest in the Panama Canal.

ANNETTE PLANELLS: Well, we received that information with concern and surprise, because there isn't anything new in the Panama Canal administration. There's not a thread of truth in what he's saying about a different kind of price for the American ships or that the Chinese are in any way administering the canal.

HOST, DW NEWS: Why do you think this has come up now? Were you surprised to hear the president-elect's comments?

ANNETTE PLANELLS: Yes, we were very surprised and we don't know what's gonna happen because we're a small country and our economy depends on foreign investment. And this kind of declarations can affect our economy in a deep way.

HOST, DW NEWS: So you're saying even the fact that Trump is even suggesting this could be damaging to Panama's economy. We know Panama's president has [01:12:00] roundly rejected Trump's comments. He's called it "an assault on Panama's sovereignty." What are people there making of his comments?

ANNETTE PLANELLS: Yeah, of course. We support the president of Panama 100 percent in this.

The Panama Canal has been part of our history from the day we started being a country in 1904, 1903. And the transition for the administration of the canal from the United States to Panama took at least 15 years where we prepared. And Panama has been very successful managing the canal. And we even increase its size for bigger ships, and it's a big part of our budget.

So his comments about Panama, even though they are not likely to be come through, it's it's very prejudicial to Panama's [01:13:00] economy.

HOST, DW NEWS: Tell us more about that. So you're saying that if Trump continues to make this an issue, regardless on whether he acts on it or not, it would have consequences for Panama's economy?

ANNETTE PLANELLS: Yes, it will. It will. Because Panama's economy is based on service and logistical around the canal and also financial services. We depend on the investment of other countries. So when he says something like that, people are going to be afraid to invest in Panama, and that's gonna cause us a lot of troubles in the economy.

SECTION B: MANIFEST DESTINY

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering Section B: Manifest Destiny.

“We’re Not for Sale”: Greenlandic Member of Danish Parliament Responds to Trump’s Vow to Buy Island - Democracy Now! - Air Date 12-27-24

AAJA CHEMNITZ: I have been representing Greenland in the Danish Parliament for almost 10 years, and I was a member of the Parliament back then, as well. I used to be a member of our own Parliament back home in Greenland before that.

And Greenland is not for sale. Greenland has never been for sale. Greenland will never be for sale. And it’s quite clear. The prime minister of Greenland has said that. And we would like to have [01:14:00] U.S. engagement. We would like to have collaboration with the U.S. But it’s very clear for us that Greenland is a self-governing country. We have our own Parliament, our own government. And anything, any decision that has to do with Greenland is something that is up to the Greenlandic people. And we have a saying in Greenland, which is, “Nothing about us without us.”

And I think it’s very important both for Trump but also for the U.S. to understand that Greenland has the autonomy for a lot of areas that we’re covering back home in Greenland ourselves. So, I’m representing Greenland on the areas that Denmark is covering in Greenland. So there’s a good and a close collaboration. And, of course, it could be better. That’s the way it is. But I think, in many ways, Greenland is really — you know, we’re taking care of our own business in many ways back home in Greenland.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: So, explain for people what this is all about. I mean, the first time when he was president, he was going to Denmark. [01:15:00] He canceled his trip, calling your prime minister at the time, a woman, a “nasty woman” for saying “no” to the possibility of the U.S. taking Greenland.

AAJA CHEMNITZ: It was because she was saying that it was an absurd idea. I still think it’s a crazy idea. And I think it’s, quite honestly, crazy to talk about expanding your empire. You can look at different places in the world right now where people are trying to expand their empire. I think that’s a crazy thing to even talk about.

So, back then, we said we’re open for business, we’re not for sale. That’s the way it is still for Greenland. And Greenland has a lot of autonomy ourselves. And therefore, the decision on what should happen with the future of Greenland is up to the Greenlandic people. And we have our own government, our own Parliament, and the decision is, therefore, something that should be discussed back home in Greenland. But [01:16:00] Greenland is not for sale, so it’s not going to happen.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: I want to ask you about the strategic significance of Greenland for the United States. It’s valuable for what? Vast reserves of zinc, copper, iron ore, uranium. Can you talk about how the U.S. and China have competed for these reserves, including uranium?

AAJA CHEMNITZ: We have almost any kind of rare earth minerals that the U.S., but also EU, is looking for. And in many ways, we need investments when it comes to rare earth, but also raw materials. And we have almost any kind of raw materials in Greenland. So, I think it’s about having a collaboration both with Denmark, with EU, but also with the U.S., in order to make sure that we have a stronger position on the market when it comes to rare earth, because right now it’s more or [01:17:00] less a monopoly from the Chinese side. And therefore, I think it makes sense to collaborate on rare earth, but also on tourism, on education, on business development in total. I think that would make sense to have a bigger U.S. engagement. But to do it in that sense that Trump, the president-elect, has been doing it has been very disrespectful. So, in many ways, this is really something that the people of Greenland don’t like. And I think, in many ways, it just brings us further away from each other. So I really think we need to have a more diplomatic approach when it comes to collaboration with Greenland, which has a lot of autonomy already and is a self-governing country.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Aaja Chemnitz, as a member of the Denmark Parliament, can you talk about the Thule Air Base, which is now a space base? [01:18:00] The air base was owned by the United States. In 2013, Greenland lifted a ban on mining radioactive materials. How does that all connect?

AAJA CHEMNITZ: Pituffik Space Base was renamed from Thule Air Base a couple of years ago, and it was in respect for the Greenlandic people and the Greenlandic language. We’re an Indigenous community, and in many ways, it’s very important for us to focus on community, family, and then me. And in many other Western communities, it’s the other way around, so it’s me, it’s family, and then community. So I think it’s very important to understand that the Greenlandic way of living can be a little bit different from the Western way of living.

And in many ways, we have a modern good society. We have a lot of welfare. We have a lot of business development in Greenland, but we would like to see much more. We have said no to [01:19:00] uranium. This was the last election for the Parliament back home in Greenland. And it was very clear from the voters that we said no to uranium, because it’s an open-pit mine in the backyard of a city where there’s quite a lot of people living there, in South Greenland. But we’re pro-mining. We’re pro-business. We would like to see much more development going on in Greenland, and we would like to see U.S. and EU engagement to a larger extent than what we’re seeing right now.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And finally, we just have 30 seconds, but you’re chair of Arctic parliamentarians. If you can talk about how climate change has impacted Greenland? I mean, earlier this year, a study found Greenland’s ice cap is losing an average of 30 million tons of ice every hour due to the effects of the climate crisis. You have a president-elect now, Trump, who often, at the [01:20:00] end of many sentences, will say, “Drill, baby, drill.”

AAJA CHEMNITZ: You know, the climate change is affecting the temperature and the climate in Greenland four times as much as the rest of the world. And so it is in the Arctic, as well. So this is really affecting our everyday life. It’s affecting our hunters, our fishers, which are living off of this. And I think, in many ways, it’s really trying to understand climate change is not something that we have a discussion about is it really real. We know it’s real. We can see it’s real.

And in many ways, I think it’s important to do much more when it comes to the climate. So Greenland has signed up for the Paris Agreement, because we would like to do much more when it comes to a green transition. So, we’re investing in power, hydropower, in Greenland, to name just one example. So, it’s very important for us to have a much more green transition in order to make sure that we are not [01:21:00] polluting more than we should do.

Donald Trump’s New Manifest Destiny - WSJ Opinion: Potomac Watch Part 2 - Air Date 12-26-24

PAUL GIGOT - HOST, POTOMAC WATCH: You mentioned the teasing of or the bluster against Canada, calling Justin Trudeau a governor of the 51st state. Obviously meant to be cutting against Justin Trudeau, who the President doesn't much like and may be on his way out as Prime Minister of Canada. But there's the serious side of this, which is the threat the President made for 25% tariffs on all Canadian imports if they don't do enough to control the border on migrants coming over the border into America, and that threat seems to be roiling Canadian politics. Chrystia Freeland, the Finance Minister, resigned not too long ago from Trudeau's government. Trudeau's government is in danger of toppling, and let's listen to the Ontario Premier, Doug Ford, talk about Canadian exports to the United States.

Doug Ford: I want to sell more electricity, more power to our US friends, and closest allies in the world, but that's a tool that we have in our toolbox. [01:22:00] We power over 1.5 million homes in Michigan, and companies in Michigan and New York state, and Wisconsin. That's the last thing I want to do. I want to sell more energy to the US. I want to sell more critical minerals to the US. Again, we are the closest trading partner, closest allies. We do $1.3 trillion of two-way trade. That's more than Japan, China, UK, and France combined. I just feel we aren't the enemy.

PAUL GIGOT - HOST, POTOMAC WATCH: Well, a little implication there, Mary, that if Trump would impose 25% tariffs, Canada has a couple of levers too.

MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY: Yeah, it's going to get mighty cold in upstate New York if Quebec Hydro cuts off the electricity supply. I think what Trump doesn't seem to really think about before he opens his mouth is this concept of reciprocity. And lots of our trading partners have used it over the years to reverse special interests, like remember the [01:23:00] steel tariffs that Bush put on, and American agriculture felt the response from Mexico very sharply, and those tariffs were removed pretty quickly. So if he wants to start a trade war, I guess what Premier Ford is saying is that Canada is ready.

PAUL GIGOT - HOST, POTOMAC WATCH: Yeah, I didn't know that Ontario exported that much electric power to Wisconsin, Michigan on the whole.

MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY: Quebec Hydro also.

PAUL GIGOT - HOST, POTOMAC WATCH: That's the whole northern tier. New York State's interesting. He brought that up, because with New York State government not allowing the development of fracking and blocking pipelines to deliver natural gas from the Marcellus Shale to New York State and New England, you could end up with a real shortfall there. And it's not inconceivable, it could be blackouts.

MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY: It's not the only response that either Canada or Mexico will have. Also, there'll be lots of other opportunity for reciprocity and could get ugly.

PAUL GIGOT - HOST, POTOMAC WATCH: Well, Donald Trump is unpredictable and he [01:24:00] often, it's fair to say, pops off to try to get attention, try to drive an agenda, and it's sometimes very difficult to figure out what his real goal is. And in this case, I'd say the Greenland thing makes a certain amount of sense if he could be persuasive to the Greenland people. But the way he's going about Panama strikes me as counterproductive and something that could create a fair bit of trouble if he doesn't do it in the right way.

MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY: Well, he has to find a way to climb down from this. I mean, he's made it such a big issue over the Christmas holiday that everybody's watching, and as it becomes more and more clear that a lot of what he's saying isn't true, he probably will have to back off. I'm not sure how.

WTF?! Trump Threatens NEW WAR...with MEXICO?! - MeidasTouch - Air Date 11-28-24

BRETT MEISELAS - HOST, MEIDASTOUCH: This is the new reporting out of Rolling Stone headline. Team Trump debates, quote, how much should we invade Mexico? In Trump's government in waiting, the only question is how massive the U. S. assault on Mexican drug cartels should be. I want to emphasize here, that's not if we should invade Mexico, which [01:25:00] would be crazy enough, but, quote, how much should we invade?

Mexico. I'm going to get into this new reporting in just a minute, but first I want to remind you that this is not the first time Trump has suggested this. Here's a clip from 2023 of Republican James Comer saying that we should have our military on the border and troops in Mexico. He also said that Trump.

Ordered the military to bomb meth labs in Mexico, but they refused to follow orders. And he said that that was a mistake. Watch this.

REP. JAMES COMER: I believe we should have a military presence at the very least on the southern border, if not across the border. One of the things we learned post Trump presidency is that he had ordered a bombing of a couple of, uh, Fentanyl labs.

Uh, uh, crystal meth labs in Mexico just across the border. And for whatever reason, the military didn't do it. I think that was a mistake.

BRETT MEISELAS - HOST, MEIDASTOUCH: In 2023 Trump ally, Republican Lindsey Graham said he couldn't think of a better use of our military than to bomb Mexico. Watch [01:26:00] this.

SENATOR LINDSAY GRAHAM: They're at war with you. You need to be at war with them.

I can't think of a better use of our military than to blow up labs. In Mexico, killing young Americans.

BRETT MEISELAS - HOST, MEIDASTOUCH: And if you remember back in 2022, there was a whole lot of reporting out there saying that Trump frequently asked about bombing Mexico while he was president. There was this piece about reporter Maggie Haberman's book that said, quote, Trump weighed bombing drug labs in Mexico after he mistook advisor

new book shows. Then there was Trump's former secretary of defense, Mark Esper, who came out with a book called a sacred oath. And in that book, he also mentioned that Trump spoke about attacking Mexico. Per Esper, Trump wanted to bomb Mexico and then lie about it. Esper wrote, quote, On at least two occasions in the summer of 2020, once in the Oval Office and a second time in his private room just off the Oval, the President approached me about a sensitive issue.

Slightly [01:27:00] hunched over with his hands motioning in front of him, like a quarterback gesturing for a long snap, he asked me if the military could, quote, shoot missiles into Mexico to destroy the drug labs and take out the cartels. Standing close to me. Yes, he spoke. The president complained that the Mexican government isn't doing enough, getting irritated as he spoke and adding quote, they don't have control of their own country.

If we could just knock them the drug labs out, he said, this would do the trick. What do you think? He said. He asked. These conversations were quite troubling, to say the least. On one hand, I shared his concern about illicit drugs being trafficked into our country and respected his passion for wanting to stop this dangerous trade.

But asking the U. S. military to shoot missiles into a sovereign country, and worse yet, our friend and neighbor, definitely was not the way to go about it. Working hard to conceal my shock at this idea. I said, Mr. President, we could do that. And as much as I want to stop these drugs to shooting missiles into Mexico would be illegal.

It would [01:28:00] also be an act of war. I recommended that we look for more ways to help the Mexican government deal with the problem. Problem, such as increasing the training, intelligence and equipment that we are providing them. We should also take another look at ideas that were tabled in the past. But to simply launch air or missile strikes into Mexico would not only violate International Law.

It would also destroy our relationship with Mexico and damage our global standing I said. Trump took these objections piercing his lips as he. He listened. He then suggested we could just shoot some Patriot missiles And take out the labs quietly, adding preposterously that quote, no one would know it was us.

He would simply deny that we launched them. I had seen Trump spin his own reality before, so I had no doubt he was confident in his ability to persuade people. We had not launched the attacks. However, we did not live in a world where the United States could strike another country and no one would believe the missiles were not ours.

I also couldn't imagine the president would resist. [01:29:00] Taking credit for the attack. Anyway, it was nonsense, plain and simple. If I hadn't seen the look on the president's face, I would have thought it was all a joke. He wanted to get this planned and done by labor day around. Then he said, just a few months away, I was speechless.

Trump thought this was the only way we could really stop this terrible trade. I took a long pause and then said again, quote, this would be an act of war, Mr. President. And there would be no way. To keep it quiet, Esper then went on Fox and Fox host Brian Kilmeade, of course, tried to justify these comments by Trump.

And Esper again reiterated that what Trump was suggesting was illegal and an act of war. Watch this.

MARC ESPER: With regard to shooting missiles into Mexico, yes, I thought that was an act of war. It was illegal. It should not happen. And those things should be discussed. And we did have a meeting, a National Security Council meeting, I describe it in a book.

Where we sat around the situation room and discussed how to address the issue with cartels.

BRETT MEISELAS - HOST, MEIDASTOUCH: Within Donald Trump's government and waiting, there is a fresh debate over whether and how thoroughly the president elect should follow [01:30:00] through on his campaign promise to attack or even invade Mexico as part of the war he's pledged to wage against the powerful drug cartels.

Quote, how much should we invade Mexico, says a senior Trump transition member. That is the question. It is a question that would have seemed batty for the GOP elite to consider before, even during Trump's first term, but in the four years since, many within the mainstream Republican centers of power have come around to support Trump's idea to bomb or attack Mexico.

Trump's cabinet picks, including his choices for secretary of defense and secretary of state have publicly supported the idea of potentially unleashing the U. S. military in Mexico. So has the man Trump has tapped to be his national security advisor. So has the man Trump selected as his borders are.

Thanks so much. To lead his immigration crackdowns. So have various Trump allies in Congress and in the media. Trump who has routinely and falsely promoted himself as the candidate who would stop endless wars now wants to lead a new conflict just south of [01:31:00] our nation's border. But at this moment it is in the words of one Trump advisor, quote, unclear how far he'll go on this one.

The source adds, quote, if things don't change, the president still believes it's necessary to take some kind of military action against these killers. Another source close to Trump describes to Rolling Stone what they call a quote, soft invasion of Mexico in which American special forces, not a large theater deployment, would be sent covertly to assassinate cartel leaders.

Indeed, this is a preliminary plan that Trump himself warmed to in private conversations. This For this story Rolling Stone spoke to six Republicans who have each talked to the twice impeached former and now future president about this topic. Some of these sources have briefed trump on these policy ideas in recent weeks.

These proposals of varying degrees of violence severity Include drone strikes or airstrikes on cartel infrastructure or drug labs, sending in military trainers and advisors to Mexico, deploying kill [01:32:00] teams on Mexican soil, waging cyber warfare against drug lords and their networks, and having American special forces conduct a series of raids and abductions.

of cartel figures. In some of these private conversations, including during this presidential transition period, Trump has told confidants and some GOP lawmakers that he plans to tell the Mexican government that they need to stem the flow of fentanyl to America somehow in a span of several months or else he will send in the U. S. military. As Rolling Stone has reported since at least last year, Trump has solicited specific battle plans and different military options for attacking Mexico.

SECTION C: MUSK

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Up next, Section C: Elon Musk.

Musk continues to attack Starmer over handling of historic child abuse - Channel 4 News - Air Date 1-3-25

HOST, CHANNEL 4 NEWS: Now, for the second day in a row, the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, has been criticising the Prime Minister on his social media platform, X. The row has escalated since yesterday, when it was revealed that Home Office Minister Jess Phillips had rejected calls for a government led inquiry into historical child sexual exploitation in Oldham, saying [01:33:00] instead it would be better for the UK.

For local council to commission it themselves, as Rotherham and indeed Telford had done previously. Now Musk has taken aim at Zakir Starmer's time as head of the Crown Prosecution Service. Kemi Nzerem joins me now. Kemi, what's, what's afoot? Alex, as you say, Donald

KEME NZEREM: Trump's current right hand man has been sending a barrage of increasingly incendiary tweets, criticising.

Sakhir Starmer in connection with the prosecution of, uh, child rape gangs. Uh, today, uh, the tweets intensified, a particularly inflammatory one using very strong language, I must warn you, uh, accused, uh, Sakhir of being, and I quote here, complicit in the rape of Britain. Now, all of this obviously presents number 10 with a bit of a, a conundrum, to respond or not to respond.

So far, they have said. Nothing, but the health secretary this morning, before Mr. Musk really got going, um, had this to say [01:34:00] about actually working with Mr. Musk.

WES STREETING MP: Some of the criticisms that Elon Musk has made, I think are, um, are misjudged and certainly misinformed, but we're willing to work with Elon Musk, who I think has got a big role to play with his social media platform to help us and other countries to tackle this serious issue.

So if he wants to work with us and roll his sleeves up, we'd welcome that.

HOST, CHANNEL 4 NEWS: Because it's not quite clear whether Elon Musk's assault on Exxon are helpful or unhelpful to Labour. Actually, you can make a case either way, but of course it's not just the Labour Party affected, is it? There is another party in all this.

KEME NZEREM: It's not just the Labour Party. Recall that Mr. Musk recently met with Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform, reportedly offered to bankroll Reform too. Well, he's also been tweeting about, rather controversially, I must say, about the jailed, uh, Far right agitator Stephen Yaxley Lennon, who you and viewers may know better as Tommy Robinson.

Well, this evening, Reform began a series of [01:35:00] events, conferences, mini conferences, if you like, ahead of the local elections. And Mr. Farage was asked, directly, whether he agreed with what Mr. Musk has been tweeting.

NIGEL FARAGE: He has a whole range of opinions. Some of which I agree with very strongly, and others of which I'm more reticent about.

Oh, having him as a supporter is very helpful to our cause. I mean, goodness me. I mean, he's an absolute hero figure, particularly young people in this country. So yes, he's very helpful indeed. Now look, everyone says, well, what about his comments on Tommy Robinson? My position is perfectly clear on that. I never wanted Tommy Robinson to join UKIP.

I don't want him to join Reform UK, and he won't be.

KEME NZEREM: So there remains an unanswered question here. Consider the special relationship. Well, Donald Trump will be president of the USA again in less than a fortnight. To what extent does it really matter to UK diplomacy, to UK politics, what Elon Musk thinks?

HOST, CHANNEL 4 NEWS: One of many unanswered [01:36:00] questions, I suspect. Kemi, thanks very much indeed. Now, when I spoke earlier to Sir David, I asked him what he made of Elon Musk's comments. very much.

SIR ED DAVEY MP: I think, uh, he's wrong. Uh, he doesn't really understand what's going on in, in our country. Um, his comments, for example, on these gangs, shows he doesn't even understand the facts.

So, uh, I, I hope we won't give him, uh, any more attention because he, he doesn't understand our country. Uh, and, uh, I think we as politicians and, and, and the media here. should have the debate focused on people who do understand what's going on.

Elon Musk drives Trump towards 'war' with Europe - Time's Radio - Air Date 1-3-25

HOST, TIMES RADIO: The U. S., uh, President elect, I should say, has announced that Britain is making a very big mistake, a very big mistake with its windfall tax on North Sea oil producers. Donald Trump, who has pledged to increase U. S. oil and gas production, has called on Britain to open up the North Sea, open up the North Sea and get rid of windmills, which is a very Trumpian thing to say, I guess.

Uh, but what has sparked Trump's outrage at the UK government. We're going to talk, of course, [01:37:00] to Theo now, uh, about this. Why is, is this strategic, or is this just Trump sort of sitting on the toilet saying the first thing that comes into his head?

THEO USHERWOOD: It's part of, I guess, a, an America First strategy, and it relates to a US based firm, uh, which has the rights to, um, or has the rights and is to explore for, uh, and drill for oil and gas in the North Sea.

Um, and of course there has been, um, um, The windfall tax was put up, um, by Rachel Reeves in the budget on oil and gas profits in the North Sea to the tune of, uh, so we now have a headline rate of, uh, 78, uh, 78 million pounds. So in terms of, Where we find ourselves, it's uh, only January the 3rd, but the government has got itself into its second transatlantic, uh, round.

This time it's with the man himself, Donald Trump, who is venting his anger, as I said, uh, at the U. S. oil, as the U. S. oil companies pulled its operations, uh, from the North Sea amidst surging taxes on oil and gas. Now, [01:38:00] he was commenting, Mr. Trump was commenting on an article that the U. S. oil giant, Apache, uh, was quitting the North Sea because of, Uh, the windfall tax on his profits.

Mr. Trump then wrote on, uh, Truth Social. This is not on X. He wrote, uh, the U. S. is making a very big mistake. Open up the North Sea. Get rid of, uh, the windmills. Uh, of course, this is a man who boiled down his energy policy during the presidential election to the simple maxim, uh, drill, baby, uh, drill. And, uh, he campaigned on a promise to increase oil and gas production, uh, during his second term.

Keir Starmer and Ed Miliband, of course, since taking office, have taken the UK in the opposite direction since the election. The Labour government is committed, remains committed, to banning new oil and gas exploration licences in the North Sea. At the same time, as I said, Rachel Weaves, the Chancellor, increased the windfall tax on rising energy profits introduced by Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, incidentally.

Uh, Jeff, following, uh, Russia's invasion of, uh, Ukraine, [01:39:00] uh, it's Octo in October's budget, uh, the, uh, the windfall tax jump from 35 percent to 38%, increasing the headline, uh, rate of tax on North Sea Line and gas to 78%, so I was just correcting myself, um, from earlier, move, uh, which has been extended to, uh, 2030, and it's prompt and it's that rise which has prompted Apache, based in Texas, To announce plans that it plans to end all production in the North Sea by December 2029 because of what it calls, and I'm quoting here, the onerous financial impact of the energy profits levy.

The broader picture is not much better either because Offshore Energies UK has previously warned that the windfall tax could result in the loss to the UK economy of around 13 2029, putting 39, 000, 30, 000. 35, 000 jobs at risk.

HOST, TIMES RADIO: So I guess there might be some sympathy for the idea that these windfall taxes are anti competitive.

You could see why strategically Trump might choose to manoeuvre [01:40:00] around this issue. But when you look at saying something like get rid of windmills, that's just nakedly, that feels potentially nakedly provocative. Yes, and,

THEO USHERWOOD: and, and, you know, it comes off the back of what, uh, Elon Musk, who is, of course, leading Trump's, uh, Department for Government, uh, Efficiency, uh, has been tweeting over the last, uh, couple of days.

As I said, this is the second row, uh, Jeff, between the incoming Trump administration and the UK, uh, government after Elon Musk, uh, hit out at the decision by the Home Office Minister Jess Phillips, uh, not to grant permission for a public inquiry into Trump. Into the grooming scandal in Olden. The question really is, where does it go from here?

Is this a pattern now that we're gonna see throughout, uh, 2020, uh, five? And I just point you, um, if I can just to Patrick McGuire's common co column on page 19. The Times, of course, you can, uh, read it with a subscription, uh, on the. Times app, which offers some clues as to how Downing Street is thinking about, um, this, uh, particular, uh, problem.

Now they can either engage, as Patrick writes, with, uh, [01:41:00] Elon Musk, uh, the bill the billionaire, uh, tech op entrepreneur, or Elon Musk, the internet troll. I think they want to do, uh, both. Uh, the former, and that's what, you know, Patrick's writing, uh, about, because that's what interests Rachel Reeves and, uh, Wes Streeting, who both have a, hold a great deal of store about when it comes to new technologies, and particularly, uh, AI, uh, they've got Peter Mandelson, the incoming, uh, UK ambassador to Washington, uh, who's looking to build bridges potentially, but not formally, of course, using the services of Nigel Farage.

Or indeed, possibly he could turn, uh, to Tony Blair, but that's not going to happen. Do

HOST, TIMES RADIO: you, do you think when you talk about building bridges that there might be some regret in the Ostama administration of not inviting him to that investment seminar?

THEO USHERWOOD: Yes, I think Because it does

HOST, TIMES RADIO: seem to have accelerated how Elon Musk feels about the UK.

THEO USHERWOOD: I think, I think there's also some, you know, If you look back, um, when it comes to, when it comes to not just Elon Musk, but Donald Trump, you know, they sent over advisers to campaign with the dem sent over activists to campaign voluntarily, [01:42:00] albeit with the Democrats during the election campaign. That was seen as being an unwise move.

Yes, it had been done before, but we're in a new world order now, aren't we? And I think also, there are comments which, You know, previously made by the likes of David Lammy, uh, Sadiq Khan, were being very critical of Donald Trump, and they, they hadn't made, they hadn't had the forethought to think that being in opposition, and then there's a jump between being in opposition and then being in government, and there's also a jump, of course, um, where you come from Donald Trump going from being the outgoing president, uh, left office in 2020 under a cloud, and then he's come back.

And I don't think anybody within Labour had anticipated that that was going to happen, and now they find themselves having to deal with him.

HOST, TIMES RADIO: But it feels like at the moment the policy from Labour is to say very little in direct response. response to some of these more inflammatory statements. How long can that go on for?

Is there a point where it's politically wise for them to get on the front foot in reaction to some of these? Because let's be honest, some of the things, Elon Musk has a lot of fans, but some of the [01:43:00] things he's been tweeting are downright inaccurate.

THEO USHERWOOD: Yes, and there's also frustration, I think, on the right, and there's a report out this afternoon saying there's some quite senior figures on the leading, uh, On the right of British politics who are saying that Elon Musk, you know, trying to get to the team Trump to advise Elon Musk not to tweet support for Tommy Robinson, that there's a recognition that that is not helpful, that Tommy Robinson is beyond the pale, and that actually they need to keep, you know, they respect the support of Elon Musk.

Of course, Elon Musk has been talking to Reform UK about large donations and support by using his platform X. But actually, by Tweeting support, you know, tweeting support for Tommy Robinson, who is in prison having breached a court order and serving an 18 month jail term. That is not something that is particularly helpful to the cause of the right.

HOST, TIMES RADIO: I mean, for a government that already, you know, generally feel on the back foot, are going into 2025 quite embattled, it feels like one of those things that might just take up a hell of a lot of budget. bandwidth, uh, this year and it'd be quite exhausting. It feels like at some point will the Starmer [01:44:00] team have to come up with a more active strategy.

THEO USHERWOOD: I think, I think when you, when you look at just how inflammatory and you mentioned, Jeff, just how inflammatory some of those tweets are from Elon Musk. They are, when you read them, they can be read no other way that they're looking to destabilise the British government. And we're, we're not alone in this, he's gone after Olaf Schultz's uh, Twitter feed.

The Chancellor of Germany has gone after his left leaning government, he's taken aim at other European leaders as well. And there is going to, you know, there is a hope, and Patrick writes about this towards the end of his column, there has to be a hope that at some point, you know, Donald Trump has to make a strategic decision about whether his government is going to be right or wrong.

for Europe, that Europe is going to be an ally, uh, European nations are going to be allies of the United States, or in effect, is Elon Musk going to be allowed to continue, uh, his efforts to destabilize those governments and find the U. S. in effect, by dint of the fact that Elon Musk is within the, the, the tent, the Donald Trump [01:45:00] tent, is in effect declaring, you know, in a war with, with Europe, to put it, to put it mildly, because of the way that he's going after the, the, the Stalmer administration.

SECTION D: TRUMP 2.0

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally, Section D: Trump 2.0.

A Geopolitical Check-Up - Open Source with Christopher Lydon - Air Date 12-26-24

CHAS FREEMAN: It is now almost 80 years after the end of World War II. It is 80 years after the end of World War II in Europe. And yet the United States still garrisons it and takes responsibility for its defense. We treat NATO as our enemy. sphere of influence in Europe, uh, which is precisely why the Russians objected to it appearing in Ukraine.

Everywhere that NATO expands, American troops and weapons follow. Uh, so basically we were asking the Russians to accept the equivalent of a Chinese military presence in Mexico or Canada. Uh, which obviously we would not accept. I think Mr. Trump is right that the relationship with Europe needs a fundamental readjustment.

Europeans must take more [01:46:00] responsibility for European defense. They cannot continue to have a free ride and to avoid decisions by depending on the United States. And he has broken a cycle which is important, and that is, we have had a habit of saying to the Europeans, you must do more in defense, but then adding.

But if you don't, we'll do it for you, which deprives them of any incentive to get their act together. Uh, in effect, there is a danger that the United States by adopting a more America first posture is not increasing its influence in the world, not leading, not making America great again, but diminishing American influence in isolating us from the fastest growing economies

and fastest, most effective incubators of technology in the world. And here, uh, the policy toward China is a case in [01:47:00] point. China now has something over one fourth of the world's STEM workers, scientists, technologists, engineers, and mathematicians. It is innovating in a remarkable way, not just in the military arena, although that is notable, but But in terms of many, many other aspects.

So, Uh, we are not effectively responding to a world in which Anglo American or trans Atlantic hegemony is being displaced by the rise of other economies and peoples and the resurgence of those who had been battered down, like the Russians. So, We've lost political influence. Militarily, we remain strong, but the balance of power militarily has shifted toward China.

Their own modernization. Their own military modernization has in many ways outpaced ours. Uh, they have rail guns on their ships. We tried to develop that [01:48:00] technology and could not do so. Their air to air missiles outrange ours. Their air force is a match for ours now in the region. And maybe beyond that, uh, they have developed radars that can penetrate our stealth technology, or so they claim.

And they are modernizing their nuclear forces and expanding them in response to our expansion and modernization of our nuclear forces. I just heard that the outgoing American ambassador to Beijing, uh, Nick Burns, who's a very, very fine and accomplished diplomat, in his farewell address. assessment of his own activities, claimed that U. S. China relations had been stabilized. But ironically, as he said that, the Chinese were running the largest exercise against Taiwan and the American forces coming to its aid that they ever have done. All three regional commands in China on the coast participated in this. Uh, there were [01:49:00] hundreds of vessels and aircraft in the air and they were deployed not just to intimidate.

or invade Taiwan, but they were deployed beyond Taiwan to prevent anyone coming to Taiwan's aid. So how this can count as stabilization is quite beyond me. And I think Mr. Trump faces a real problem. He may be dealing with it creatively. He has invited Xi Jinping, the president and the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party to attend his inauguration.

This is unprecedented. Have we heard back yet? I don't think we will. I think this is a symbolic gesture by Mr. Trump, and it has two positive elements. One, he's signaling to the Chinese that even if he's about to mug them with tariffs, he wants to keep the possibility of a deal open. That is positive. And second, he is in tune with his own philosophy, arguing that problems with China can only be solved at the top, uh, that [01:50:00] his entourage, his Secretary of State designate, uh, Marco Rubio, uh, you know, can take care of other problems, but that he himself will engage, uh, with the Chinese.

So this is a gesture, a symbolic gesture. I don't think, however That he's correct, that the Chinese can wheel and deal at the Xi Jinping level. Xi Jinping is primus inter pares, he is the core of the Chinese leadership, but that leadership is collective. China has politics too.

CHRISTOPHER LYDON - HOST, OPEN SOURCE: It's my cue to reframe the conversation around your own rather amazing history with China.

You made your bones as a diplomat as a very young man. U. S. Foreign Service Officer, still in your twenties. Interpreting Richard Nixon in this way. And Mao Zedong to each other in those breakthrough talks in 1972, that week in Beijing that changed the whole world. But there [01:51:00] was this puzzle that was not solved in 1972, the matter of what's to do with the other China, which claims sovereignty of the whole place.

Nationalists who repaired to the island of Taiwan and have thrived incredibly ever since. But it's now Donald Trump's puzzle, his riddle, his answer. To wrestle with, and I want to know how you'd advise him. I'm also trying to picture Donald Trump as a, as a reversioning of Richard Nixon. It was not a popular move Richard Nixon made at the time.

He was a gambler. It was a long shot in a certain way. And I wonder if Donald Trump could ever conceive of himself as being in something of a similar spot. Time for a very bold, improbable move.

CHAS FREEMAN: Well, Mr. Trump is clearly capable of that, as he demonstrated in his handshake and embrace of Kim Jong un, the North Korean leader [01:52:00] in the DMZ at Panmunjom, and his unsuccessful efforts to produce a rapprochement between Pyongyang and Washington.

So he shares with Richard Nixon an indifference to protocol. Uh, and a willingness to break precedent in the broad interest, but he's a very different individual. Uh, Richard Nixon was also a rather strange personality, but he was a successful politician for many years and he grew into a statesman. He was intimately familiar with international affairs.

Uh, he had traveled the world, he had debated our adversaries. He was a gifted advocate in the courtroom. And, um, very different personality. He also had the benefit of, uh, of a compelling strategic incentive to reach out to China, namely his realization that Soviet threats to attack and [01:53:00] subdue China would remove a key piece from the geopolitical chessboard and had to be prevented.

He was determined to place China once again under American protection, as we did in World War II, when we had very little expectation that Chiang Kai shek's government would make any gains against the Japanese who had invaded China. But, They could serve the purpose of tying down an enormous number of Japanese troops and diverting Japanese attention while we conducted our war in the Pacific.

So, we made China essentially a protected state. Uh, we declared that its continued survival was essential to our strategic interests. And Richard Nixon did the same with the People's Republic of China in 1972. But those compelling strategic arguments have been replaced by other arguments that few people [01:54:00] find quite as compelling.

It's compelling because they're not military. Climate change. China is in the lead internationally in dealing with climate change. Its technology is the most advanced in the renewable energy area and it annually installs solar and wind power that is equal to the existing stockpile of all the rest of the world combined.

It is way in the lead in that and we could learn a great deal and we could benefit a great deal from harnessing that technology. But guess what we've done? We have embargoed silicon from Xinjiang on human rights grounds, which are pretty dubious. And we accused the Chinese of genocide in Xinjiang when they re educate people but don't kill them.

And we say that there is no genocide in Gaza when people are being murdered en masse. So this has no credibility, but just recently the Biden administration just put massive tariffs on [01:55:00] imports of solar panels from China. That may help us develop our own industry, but it will not be as advanced nor will it be as economic as what the Chinese produce.

We have gone out of our way. to block Chinese companies from other markets. But in the process, we've overlooked the fact that they have developed those markets. And we are now a declining factor in their international trade. So the influence we once had from interdependence with China is attenuated.

They don't want to have a trade war with us. But they know how to deal with one, and they have begun to do so. They have just embargoed under export controls exports of rare earths, which are essential for our defense industry and for us to make semiconductors here, and it will take us years to overcome these impediments, they are [01:56:00] replicating with us what we have done to them, uh, because we have been embargoing, blocking, export controlling, and cutting supply chains with them like mad.

And they're now reciprocating, which they hadn't done before. So I think it's fair to say that we are now in full economic war with China, with only Mr. Trump's arrival on January 20th, uh, needed to escalate it.

The Weekender: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Destruction Part 2 - The Muckrake Political Podcast - Air Date 12-27-24

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: The Republican Party has taken its marching orders largely from Fox News and largely from the institutes and think tanks that are funded by the wealth class that helped give birth to the new oligarchical class.

Going back to the George W. Bush era, there were daily talking points that were handed down from Fox News in terms, they were all designed by these think tanks and institutes and then given to Roger Ailes and the Fox News rank and file, of how to talk about things, [01:57:00] what positions to take, you name it.

That was a tightly constructed, permission structure that was a tightly constructed political agenda and propaganda machine. The liberal permission structures are a lot looser. It's moderates talking to one another and giving each other permission to move further and further right over time. Now, that comes with a lot of other incentives that are taking place.

CNN is hemorrhaging viewers. One of the things we've heard from them, uh, you know, each time they keep bringing in new heads of the network, every single one of them says, Well, we, we need to be less of a, of an echo chamber. We need to, we need to be, you know, a lot more independent. And that doesn't mean bringing in voices from the left or even progressives, of course, that means bringing in more and more right wing voices and figures and coverage.[01:58:00]

So, as they're hemorrhaging viewers, they are most definitely going to move towards the right. They're going to have articles and opinion pieces that treat Donald Trump's rantings as if they're normal, that do not critique Elon Musk and other members of the oligarchical class. So they themselves are engaged in their own battle against cognitive dissonance.

I mean all the people who run those networks and run those platforms who are from the wealth class and who are much incentivized in order to carry out the actions of the wealth class, that's what they're doing. But the water in the pot Is being turned up and up and up into a boil until these things are no longer, well, we're just asking questions.

Well, we're just covering both sides. Then all of a sudden we start hearing about invading Canada, invading Mexico, [01:59:00] buying Greenland, taking over the Panama canal. We're not even to January 20th yet. And all we're seeing articles and coverage It goes ahead and creates permission structures for liberals and moderates to go along with this stuff.

CNN is hoping to bring along more Republican viewers. Best of luck with that. They're going to continue moving towards the right. MSNBC, which is similarly hemorrhaging viewers. I mean, I don't even know what's going to happen with them at this point. They very well could be sold in, um, you know, these upcoming mergers and acquisitions that we're getting ready to watch take place during the Trump administration.

These people are just licking their lips and sharpening their knives. They are so excited. And if you pay any attention whatsoever to what executives are saying about what they expect, it's just one larger merger and acquisition after another, consolidating and creating media monopolies, which is all that they want to do, and they were biding their time during [02:00:00] Biden's administration.

This thing hasn't even started, and it's already off to a galloping start. Going through that list again. Ford, which God knows how much money they've got trying to get their electric vehicles off the ground because of the Biden administration. Facebook. We've seen Mark Zuckerberg trying to go full MAGA even after him and the Democrats were, you know, basically playing footsie underneath the table for years.

Amazon. Jeff Bezos was, you know, doing the same thing that Zuckerberg was. Goldman Sachs. I mean, my God, Kamala Harris basically campaigned with Goldman Sachs. General Motors, another EV beneficiary and another corporation that's been in bed with the Democrats, AT& T, the exact same. Not only are they giving money to Trump at this point, trying to bribe him and curry his favor.

They're also bringing in MAGA and GOP consultants to go ahead and quote unquote de [02:01:00] woke themselves. Getting rid of DEI statements, getting rid of ideological, and I'm putting giant scare quotes around that, ideological statements of purpose that they've had on their websites and in their corporate documents.

They're getting prepared. They're getting ready, they're setting the table for what is coming on January 20th. We're already seeing the bleed of the second Trump administration into the days before Trump even takes the oath of office.

Credits

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: That's going to be it for today. As always, keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts were questions about today's topic or our upcoming topics—the role of the billionaire bros on our politics and the legacy of Jimmy Carter on his biggest issues. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at (202) 999-3991, or simply email me to [email protected].

The additional sections of the show included clips from Forbes Breaking News, Code Switch, DW [02:02:00] News, Democracy Now!, Wall Street Journal Opinion, the MeidasTouch, Channel 4 News, Time's Radio, Open Source with Christopher Lydon, and the Muckrake Political Podcast. Further details are in the show notes.

Membership is how you get instant access to our incredibly good and often funny weekly bonus episodes, in addition to there being no ads and chapter markers in all of our regular episodes, all through your regular podcast player. You'll find that link in the show notes, along with the link to join our Discord [02:03:00] community, where you can also continue the discussion. And don't forget to follow us on any and all new social media platforms you may be joining these days.

So, coming to you from far outside the conventional wisdom of Washington DC, my name is Jay!, and this has been the Best of the Left Podcast coming to twice weekly thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show from BestOfTheLeft.com.

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#1680 The US puts the Hell in Health Care: For-profit insurance, Pharma, and the hatred and conspiracies they breed (Transcript)

Posted by · January 04, 2025 12:06 PM

Air Date 1/4/2025

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast.

The murder of a health insurance CEO being met with widespread approval, and the risk of going backward on life-saving vaccines in the country, pretty much sums up the current state of our approach to healthcare in the US.

For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our Top Takes in about 50 minutes today includes Straight White American Jesus, Serious Inquiries Only, The Majority Report, The ReidOut, and The Lever. Then in the additional Deeper Dives half of the show, there'll be more in four sections: Section A. RFK Jr.; Section B. Luigi Mangione; Section C. United Healthcare; and Section D. Health care history.

Luigi Mangione and the End of Civilization - Straight White American Jesus - Air Date 12-13-24

BRAD ONISHI - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: So we are going to talk about Luigi Mangione and the killing of the United Health CEO, Brian Thompson. We're then going to talk about Pete Hegseth and the military and also [00:01:00] just the general target that Trump's nominees and Trump himself have put on immigrants and queer folks, including and especially trans folks. So we will go there too with some updates in that whole arena. But we are going to start today with Mangione and I think the story that has really captivated the nation this week.

I think Dan, in a media landscape that we have now, where everyone is so fragmented, it's hard to think of a story basically being universal, like reaching every corner of the internet and broadcast news and everything else, but this one really has. I feel like I haven't done story time in a while and I, there's going to be a part of me here that wants to really get moving, but I feel like we're also going to have a chance to dissect an article that came out in the last two days and do something we haven't done in a while, which is kind of our grad seminar, "let's look at key quotes and break them down," mode of operating, which Dan, I really miss. And if there's something I miss about grad school, it's that, right? Sitting in a room, breaking down texts. It is really, [00:02:00] really enjoyable to me. All right, here's what's going on friends, you all know by now that the alleged killer of the CEO, Brian Thompson, the healthcare CEO, is a young guy named Luigi Mangione.

He has kind of captured the internet, he has polarized people, but some people are treating him like a folk hero, he's saying that he's very good looking, he's young, he is something like Robin Hood, something like, somebody who, you know, deserves to be somehow emulated or revered, and so on. One of the questions I'm sure some of you have, and I know that some of you already know this, but I think it's worth repeating, is what does the motive seem to be here?

And Robert Evans at It Could Happen Here said it this way a couple days ago. "His friend lived with him at an intentional community for digital workers in Honolulu in 2022. Confirms that Luigi suffered an injury shortly after taking a basic surfing class. After moving there. This laid him up in bed for about a week, unable to move, and his friends had to help him with the [00:03:00] special bed for the pain.

In general, we have ample confirmation that he was someone who dealt with a series of escalating health issues that changed him from an extremely active, physically fit young man, into somebody who felt like they were no longer able to do or enjoy the things they had previously been able to do and enjoy.

Now, this is most of what we know about the health history of Luigi Mangione as of December 10th. One of the things that, I mean, we can go into his manifesto, we can go into more here, but I'll just summarize. He seems to be somebody who had back pain for a long time. It seems to have gotten worse over the last couple of years.

And that, in many ways, radicalized him. The episode that they did over at It Could Happen Here was, Luigi Mangione was radicalized by pain. And I want to hold on to that phrase. I think it's a very apt phrase and I think they did a great job with that over at It Could Happen Here pod and their whole outfit. He was radicalized by pain. We can verify, they say that Mangione suffered from chronic [00:04:00] back pain. He had five different books in his Goodreads that he read about dealing with back pain and healing from back pain as well as other chronic health issues. If he is the shooter. Then we can confirm he also chose to act out by targeting an insurance CEO.

So Dan, I think there's, as soon as people heard us start talking about this there, are we going to take sides? Are we going to sit here and say that he's a hero and he's this or that? I want to try to do something with a little nuance, which is something we've always gone for on this show.

And I want to try to analyze something that I think is really important about this whole set of events. I'm not going to celebrate murder. I'm not going to sit here and say that what he did was good, or right. I'm not going to condone random interpersonal violence and I'm not going to encourage my kids to look up to him.

Okay, now, saying all of that, Brian Thompson was a human being. We can say that because of the role he played in the health [00:05:00] insurance system, that he was perpetuating some of the worst harms of that system and so on and so forth. There are kids though today that don't have a dad and so on. I'm not going to sit here and say I'm totally, let free Luigi. I'm not going to do that. Okay. What I am interested in is however, and I want to legitimize and I want to recognize, and I want to see what it means is the overwhelming outpouring of grief, anger, sadness, and pain, by those who've either sympathized with him or celebrated him.

Dan, there have been so many memes, so many tweets, so many Bluesky, whatever a Bluesky is skeet. It's called a skeet, which I'm just not, man, I'm, we have to draw the line. Am I supposed to call it a skeet? Is that what we're doing? I don't know. That seems, there's just a nineties kid in me that doesn't feel like that's appropriate, but whatever.

People have basically, used [00:06:00] this set of events to express their pain, right? If Luigi was radicalized by pain, people have used his actions to express their pain and basically express the tragedies and ravages of our healthcare system. What I want to notice and what I want to analyze is not whether or not he should have done this.

I don't want to ask that question. And it's not a question that I think is open for me. I don't think that we should encourage people to sneak up on others behind them and shoot them. If that is what he did, that's what he allegedly did. That's okay. But what I am interested in is this led to Dan and outpouring, right?

It felt like it was some kind of event that people, it was a canvas. It was a landscape. It was something where people could go find themselves, throw themselves, project themselves. I'm going to stop. I got, if I get going, you're going to not be on the mic here for another 50 minutes. So, any further reactions just to the events themselves, to what I'm saying, to the kind of internet culture [00:07:00] that's now surrounding this whole set of events and so on?

DAN MILLER - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: Yeah, I mean, it's not even just so called internet culture, right? You had the mainstream legacy media stuff reaching out and saying, we want to hear your stories about, the healthcare system or how you feel about this. And they got just flooded, again, inundated with people who, even if they didn't like, sort of condone this, they felt like they understood it. They felt like this was somebody who reached a breaking point that I think a lot of people, maybe I would say it this way, talk about being radicalized by pain, it appears that he reached some breaking point that a lot of people could imagine reaching that they might not live it out. They might not carry it out. I think most people won't. And again, we wouldn't condone that, but I think for a lot of people, this, they were, they understood this. I don't know if that makes sense. And it's a distinction I make sometimes for my students. That I think is worth looking at here of the difference between explaining something and justifying it.

And I think that's what we're trying to do is explain this to try to understand it. We're not [00:08:00] justifying it. We're not telling people everybody who's been denied a claim by something to go out and, kill somebody. But I think that there's, I think what this does is it makes an act that in the abstract is outlandish and violent and something that nobody, some regular people would never do. And I think there are a lot of people that say, you know what? I don't know if my circumstances were different, if I am radically different from that. I don't know, this isn't an act that feels completely foreign to me, that feels impossible, and I think that, I don't know if I'm articulating that well, but I think that that's a strange, affective place to be. And if people are listening, and you've ever been in that space where there's something that, in the abstract, you'd be like, nope, not me, not ever, and then you find yourself in a circumstance where you're like, oh, I'm not doing that, but I kind of get it. And I find myself getting it and I feel weird that I get it.

I think a lot of people have that kind of conflicted reaction as well. But I think all of that is real and is very much on display with everything that we're hearing and the, as you say the kind of [00:09:00] internet ecosystem that's taking place or taking shape around this, the constellation of responses.

You Dont Actually Need to Condemn the Murder of the CEO Guy - Serious Inquiries Only - Air Date 12-12-24

THOMAS SMITH - HOST, SERIOUS INQUIRIES ONLY: Thing one: You don't need to condemn the murder of the healthcare CEO, of the insurance guy. You don't need to. I'm gonna do you a favor. You don't need to do it. You don't need to say, well, murder is bad, I condemn the...you don't need to. It's not a thing you need to do. There's lots of murders every day. Do you condemn those? No. You don't. There's lots of bad things that happen every day. Do you condemn them? No, you don't actually need to. That might seem flippant, but it's actually, I've been thinking a lot about this, and maybe this is just the way my mind works, but I've come to realize it's almost like a mathematical thing. It's the way that the status quo perpetuates itself, and that privilege works, and that systemic injustice continue, like, we do this thing, where it's climate change all over again. We've got one [00:10:00] climate change denying scientist, and we've got one climate, like, actual scientist, and those are even, we do the same thing with this. Because what I keep hearing is, Yeah, okay, of course the health insurance situation, not great. there's lots of suffering, but murder, you can't murder. And this guy was a father and this was a human being and he's been murdered, and there's that kind of thing.

None of that is untrue, but you've put it now at a 50/50, you've now, and in some cases, depending on your emphasis, you've maybe made the murder more important because you said... it depends on the thing, I've noticed it's the thing you say first, and I'm guilty of this too, because same thing will happen with October 7th. Yeah, October 7th was awful, but now look at everything that's happened since then, and I'll own that. I don't care as much about October 7th as I do about the genocide that happened after. Doesn't mean I don't care about October 7th, [it] means, relatively speaking, [00:11:00] it's not my priority. And I think it's really telling which order you do that in. All right. Yeah. Healthcare. It's bad. I get it. I get it as bad, but like, this is a murder of a thing... that tells me where your priority is. Your priority is in criticizing and shutting down people who are maybe vocally supporting the murder, maybe joking about it, and I understand why you're doing that, but I'm here to say you don't actually have to do that.

And doing so is part of the injustice that continues. I mean this seriously, because what we're not doing is expressing our terms properly. We're not putting things on equal footing. If the thing we need to do is properly condemn all the deaths involved, then what that would... and I, this might seem ridiculous, but I've actually, the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced of it. This is right. What you should have to do is go through every fucking example of someone who died because of bad healthcare, or at least got fucked over, someone who didn't [00:12:00] get their pills, someone who suffered. You should have to go through every single example first. And be like, yes, I condemn that person who was denied their cancer treatment, and then they died a preventable death because of UnitedHealthcare. And yes, I condemn this person who's had to pay way too much. They went bankrupt because UnitedHealthcare denied their coverage, and now they're bankrupt. Now they're homeless. Now I denounce what happened here. You should have to literally go through all of it. You should have to go through both sides of the ledger and condemn every single instance on the other side of UnitedHealthcare fucking people over. And what it did to them. And then, and only then can you say, and I also denounced this killing of their CEO. Like, that should be how it works.

I have no idea how people will receive this argument of mine. It may seem ridiculous, but I'm more and more convinced. This is actually what needs to happen. Because we suck as humans at doing this. We suck at properly evaluating large [00:13:00] numbers of anything, but of suffering, especially. We see a headline that a million children are starving. We're like, Oh man, fuck that sucks. It's not like we're happy about it, but we're like, man that, boy that's awful. And then we see a detailed image of one person being shot. And we're like, fuck that hits us the same or more, actually hits us more. I mean, there's studies about this, like more numbers, if the numbers get too big to where we think there's nothing we can do about it, we start to just not care. It's hard. It's human. It is. I'm not saying anyone's like evil for accidentally doing this. It is very clearly our human biases. And what I'm coming to realize, if I hadn't already, was that these very biases are a major reason why this awful status quo continues, because we have to do this fucking thing where this murder happens and we got, look, okay, the health insurance situation, not great. Not [00:14:00] great. But murder. You can't murder.

I'm serious. You should, if you're going to fucking do that, you should have to go into detail. You don't get to just say, in the same way that if you want to talk about the three scientists out of a hundred who don't accept climate change. Okay. You should have to go into detail. Okay. This person accepts it for these reasons. This person, this expert says, yes, it's happening. Like, you should actually have to go through the proper weighting of the sides. That's how you would actually arrive at an accurate feeling and actually an accurate emotional gut feeling as to what's going on. That's our problem as humans. We don't do that. It's too easy for us to use language, this great human thing, to be like, Yeah, okay, all kinds of suffering over here? Sure, granted. You know? Oh, I accept it. Yeah, no, I know. It's awful. It's all kinds of stuff. But then there's a murder. And then, just like that, we've put them on equal footing.

They're not on equal footing. They're not. [00:15:00] The stuff that the insurance company is doing is worse. The stuff that Israel did after is worse. They're not on equal footing. If you, the thing you do where you're like, well, yeah, okay. That they're not prosecuting the war properly, but like the terrorists. Yeah. Okay. We should have to go through each and every child... let's do it. Let's do it. I condemn. Let's start, let's keep, we'll do one in one. Here's what we'll do. We'll do one in one. I condemn this death of this Israeli on October 7th. And now we go over. Okay, now I condemn this child that was killed. This Palestinian child that was killed. We'll go one for one and we'll keep going until we've done all that. We've condemned all of them. And then wouldn't you know it? What will happen is we run out of the October 7th pretty quickly. And then we have tens of thousands left over of Palestinian children to talk about after that. And only then, if we actually went through that fucking process, would we have a proper [00:16:00] emotional feeling of what's going on there. We're just, we don't do that as humans. We're not good at it. And it causes so many problems.

The Dark History Behind RFK Jr.'s Health Policies - The Majority Report - Air Date 12-11-24

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I want to admit, I know Emma wants to talk a little bit about, the other sort of players who represent a similar thing in this, but what and Musk and others,

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: really, but,

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: but what, where, how do you approach it from this perspective? Because like, okay. The KKK, for example wants universal health care.

RICK PERLSTEIN: The KKK thing was super weird. I had a pamphlet from the 1920s. It was a KKK pamphlet saying the government should give away free health care because they believed in the germ theory, right? And all these immigrants were so dirty and diseased that unless everyone could go to a doctor for free, we'd all die because of these diseased immigrants.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Well, okay. I disagree with their their reasons for it, obviously. And with Kennedy, there's no sort of structural answer to what he's talking about. It's all he knows the right person to put in these [00:17:00] things and magically he's going to get the Republican Congress to outlaw certain chemicals and production. I mean, but, part of me is like, well, that would be good. Like, all right, the KKK is pushing for a single payer health insurance, let's say, or free government sponsored health insurance. That would be good. How do I, as someone who does not want the rest of the program that would come along with these people, how do I respond to this?

Because I'm looking at Bernie Sanders is saying to Musk, "I want to cut the military," and I want to cut the military too. But in, in my reaction to Kennedy saying like he's going to get he's going to regulate, I mean, cause there's, he doesn't say the word regulate, but that's the only way if you're going to get this, these chemicals out of food, you got to pass laws that say these chemicals don't belong in food anymore. And I like the idea of yes, let's regulate the hell out of corporations and introduce that concept and mainstream it. But how do you respond? [00:18:00]

RICK PERLSTEIN: This is why it's all talk, Sam. And this is why, they're just not trustworthy vectors for this sort of thing.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I agree. But what's the problem?

RICK PERLSTEIN: Sam Rayburn was one of the legendary politicians of the forties and fifties. He was LBJ's mentor. He was the Speaker of the House. And he said, he had a very wonderful saying that you should never forget, which is that "Any jackass can knock down a barn, it takes a carpenter to build something." These people are all jackasses and they want to knock down, this kind of, these sets of public health, bureaucracies that have been built up over a very, very, very long time. And, sometimes they failed us and sometimes they succeeded, right? They definitely need reform. They definitely need fixing. All bureaucracies need reform and fixing. But if you just kind of knock them out with a meat ax, right? The Vivek-Musk, "Oh, we're going to get rid of half of all public employees." You're just [00:19:00] destroying decades of accumulated expertise, right? Decades of accumulated knowledge, wisdom strategic capacity, institution building, you know? And the idea is, this is kind of the fascist idea that you can just kind of build a new world by scratch. By having the proper people in there with the kind of proper ideas.

And that's, that's the, any jackass can knock down a barn, right? It'll cause chaos, right? And it'll turn everyone who works within this bureaucracy which is just basically ordinary folks who work hard and generally have the public interest in mind, into extensions of the will of very bad people. Right? And they're just not trustworthy.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Right. All of that makes sense to me. But I'm saying like from the, and maybe it's more of an issue for people like you or I, right? [00:20:00] Or Emma. What, how do we, how do we, is it just simply we reject all of this because we know they're not going to do it? Or do we also, or is there also an element of "that's a good thing, but they won't do it." How does the part of society that doesn't want it, because I was looking at the clips of people up in AOC's district. There's been a couple of different reporters who have gone up there and interviewed people, one locally, and you can hear the way that people are talking about, or you hear there some people say, "No, he's only going to get rid of the criminal immigrants and not other immigrants." What's the job of those of us who don't want the authoritarianism, to use their promises for issues that we support. So that if we get past this stage, those issues [00:21:00] still have a resonance and, or that their failure to deliver ends up costing them.

RICK PERLSTEIN: Right, right. I mean, I think that I would point to the 900,000 unnecessary deaths that happened under Donald Trump's presidency, in the year 2000 (2020), if that was, I refer to 900,000 specifically, because that was a study that was done if we had the same rate, of deaths during COVID, as Australia had we would have saved 900,000 lives.

And Australia was a country that actually was, the prime minister was a conservative. He was actually a global warming denier, but he just did the kind of the normal things of turning it over to these boring public health bureaucracies. Turning it over to boring fricking experts and said, "You guys are in control. You [00:22:00] guys are in charge. I'll listen to you instead of you listening to us," right? And it's a tricky thing, Sam. It's really kind of one of the contradictions, the paradoxes, of small-d democracy that you do have to defer to experts and expertise is not always democratic, right? It's, the kind of "do your research" stuff that populism is very compelling, right? "Do your research" often, unfortunately means you do a Google search and the bad guys know how to manipulate search very well. And, they search, do search engine optimizations. So if Google trans and the first thing you come up with is the trans person who wants to play on the volleyball team, not the person who almost died from gender dysmorphia, right? So, I mean, we have to kind of, there's no magic bullet because you have to do this difficult thing of saying you have to defer to experts who know more than you.

Vaccine skepticism: Will the new Trump admin axe the polio vaccine - The ReidOut - Air Date 12-13-24

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: Facing a likely contentious confirmation hearing, RFK Jr., Trump's pick for [00:23:00] Secretary of Health and Human Services, will head to the hill next week to meet with Senators. The New York Times is reporting that Kennedy's lawyer and noted vaccine skeptic, Aaron Siri, joined Kennedy in questioning and choosing candidates for top health positions, deepening concerns about vaccine hesitancy, taking the wheel and driving us back to when we had to be concerned about diseases like the measles, diphtheria, and polio. The New York Times adds that in 2022, Siri petitioned the government to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine, saying that because the clinical trials relied upon to license this product did not include a control group, the FDA, therefore, must either withdraw or suspend the approval of this product, adding, quote, "it is likely and wrongly believed that this product can prevent infection and transmission." Late today, RFK Jr. 's spokesperson responded to this report, telling NBC News in a [00:24:00] statement that the polio vaccine should be available to the public, and thoroughly and properly studied.

And properly studied? It's worth a reminder that by the mid 20th century, polio was killing or paralyzing over half a million people a year around the world. But after the vaccine became widely available, cases decreased by a reported 99 percent since 1988, which helped to prevent an estimated 20 million cases of paralysis in children.

Before the vaccine, polio afflicted many unnamed people, and some people you're familiar with, like FDR, and in more recent history, Senator Mitch McConnell, who was treated for polio as a child.

Now, ahead of the transition, some fear that history is starting to look a little bit more like a prequel, with noted vaccine skeptics in an administration filled with multimillionaires and billionaires, people who may look at diseases as a way to turn a profit, people gearing up to make America go back to worrying about communicable [00:25:00] diseases, as if Trump's handling of COVID wasn't bad enough.

Joining me now is Dr. Erwin Redlener, MSNBC Public Health Analyst and Founding Director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University. Dr. Redlener, thank you so much for being here. I want to start with this claim by Mr. Siri that the polio vaccine, because they didn't use a control group, I guess meaning allowing some people to get polio and see what happened, the vaccine is not safe and should be taken off the market. Your thoughts.

ERWIN REDLENER: So, yeah. Hi, Joy. I'm astounded that we're having this conversation. Medicine has been all about, we have a disease that's killing people or injuring people. We try to treat it and then we try to prevent it. It's been a steady progress for 50 to a hundred years now.

And the great triumphs of medicine are mostly about vaccinations. They've prevented millions and millions of people from suffering [00:26:00] lifelong paralysis or death or brain injuries. And it's just amazing to me to even think about having a control group where some children got the polio vaccine and some didn't, exactly what you're talking about. Which children will we not give the vaccine to? Since we know for an absolute fact that it prevents the disease. It is extraordinary, really, and it's hard to even grasp how absurd this entire position is. Vaccinate, vaccinations in general. Yeah, so no, that is, it's crazy.

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: The idea of a clinical control group, that was the Tuskegee experiments, just letting some people get whatever the disease is and seeing what happened. It's extraordinary that people want to do the Tuskegee experiments on the whole country.

Mitch McConnell, it's not as if people, we don't know anyone that ever had polio. Mitch McConnell had it as a child. This is what even he said. And he's as hard right MAGA, helping Trump as it [00:27:00] gets. "The polio vaccine has saved millions of lives and held out the promise of eradicating a terrible disease. Efforts to undermine public confidence in public cures is not just uninformed, they're dangerous. Anyone seeking the Senate's consent to serve in this incoming administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts."

Now, if I trusted that he would actually vote against RFK Jr., I would actually compliment him for that. But they wanna do more than just mess with the polio vaccine, potentially. Pre-vaccine annual cases of the measles, 530,000; after the vaccine, 13. Diptheria, 200,000; now zero. Mumps, 162,000; we don't even hear about mumps anymore; 621. Rubella, 48,000; goes down to six. Smallpox, 29,000 to zero. Polio, 16,000 to zero. We could go back to the numbers on the left hand of that screen, right, doctor, if we get rid of vaccines.

ERWIN REDLENER: We absolutely would go back and, one of the things that's so interesting about the Senate, [00:28:00] Joy, is that the senators know that polio vaccine prevents polio and then the other vaccines prevent the other diseases.

I think there's a conflict here where they think somehow that requiring children to get these life-saving vaccines will somehow violate their freedom or their parents' freedom to make a choice. And it's not that at all. We're talking about the public's health. If your kid is not going to get vaccinated and many other kids are not going to get vaccinated, that actually puts a lot of other people at risk.

So, if you break your leg and you don't want to get treated for it, good luck to you. I'm sorry for you. But if you don't get vaccinated, you're not just endangering yourself or your child, you're endangering my children and my grandchildren. And that's what the senators really need to realize.

I wish I could sit down with all of them, Joy, and just say, Listen, we understand the freedom issue. We're not disputing that. But right now [00:29:00] we're talking about the public's health and well being. We cannot go backwards in medicine. That would be an absolute disaster for the country. And the fact that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. even hangs around with somebody like Aaron Siri is a warning sign to senators, please exercise your responsibilities. Do not let these people into America's healthcare system. It's many, many steps backward, Joy.

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: Yeah. Rich dilettantes with no scientific training, deciding they can decide public health for all of us because they've got a vibe that they don't like vaccines.

It's a terrifying reality.

Weekly Roundup Luigi Mangione and the End of Civilization Part 2 - Straight White American Jesus - Air Date 12-13-24

BRAD ONISHI - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: I know how I would say this in France, but -- and I've never heard Adrian's last name pronounced in English, I'm not cool enough to hang out at Atlantic dinner parties and cocktail hours and stuff, so I don't know. But anyway, it could be Lafrance. It could be La France. It could be Laference. Maybe it's Laference. I don't know how you say [00:30:00] this in the United States of America. I'm not making fun of the name. I'm saying, I don't know how one is supposed to render this name in English. Okay.

This, article, Dan, created a sense of complete outrage online. There were so many people angry. And I think this is an article that you can read the headline and just get super angry and start being snarky without reading it. Don't get me wrong. I don't like this article at all. And I don't like the argument here. But I want to go through some key points and see what you and I come up with.

So here's the first bit. "The line between a normal functioning society and catastrophic decivilization can be crossed with a single act of mayhem. This is why, for those who've studied violence closely, the brazen murder of a CEO in midtown Manhattan, and more important, the brazenness of the cheering reaction to his execution, amounts to a blinking and blaring warning signal for a society that has become already too inured to bloodshed in the conditions that exacerbate it."

Now, I do think there's some [00:31:00] nuance in this article. And I do think there's a little bit of trying to recognize certain factors and conditions. But I will say, Dan, that this opening line did not evoke sympathy for me for the argument because, one, you're talking about one event leading to catastrophic breakdown of society. The point, the example here is, of course, what happened in Manhattan this past couple of weeks, and the cheering reaction to that.

It's the same week Daniel Penny was exonerated for killing a man on the subway. And as many people have pointed out, we live in a society where people are cheered on for killing protesters. Does anyone remember Kyle Rittenhouse?

So there is -- I'm not going to lie -- from paragraph one, seemingly to me, a disconnect. There is one of those moments where you're like, this sounds like an elite who is zooming in to American life, and there's a lot of folks who are going to think [00:32:00] about school shootings and the killing of migrants, the killing of trans people, all kinds of murders and violence that is cheered on, that is not this one.

And so that's my reaction to that first paragraph. We're doing our grad seminar. You want to jump into the conversation here, Dr. Miller?

DAN MILLER - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: Yeah, I, agree. it was going to make essentially the same point, that it reads like the elite who's suddenly scared shitless because, oh, this was an elite who is shot. This wasn't kids in a public school where i'm not going to send my kids because i'm an elite person. This wasn't somebody on the subway that I don't ride because i'm an elite person. This isn't somebody who lives in a dangerous neighborhood that I'm not going to live in, because i'm an elite person.

I think there was a strong dose of that, as you say. And I think it's always worth questioning when people decry quote unquote "violence." What violence is being decried and what violence is being overlooked as just the price of being an American? And you listed a whole bunch of those. And on the [00:33:00] political right, many of those are actively celebrated at present.

So I think that I shared that same disconnect with you when I first read it was like, Oh, so this is the act of decivilization? Like this is the warning signal, not the mass shootings that don't even make the news anymore. Not the targeting of migrants, not the threat that's going on right now that, Oh, well, hey, Donald Trump says we might just need to deport families, including the citizens, like the whole family might need to be deported. All of that. None of that's decivilization, but this event is. That question, I think, of what makes somebody take an event as the seminal, defining event, that's always a point that should be questioned, and I think that it stands out here.

BRAD ONISHI - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: Well, Lindsey Graham saying that, you know, should turn Palestine into a parking lot. Come on.

Okay. This leads to a paragraph a little further down in which the author defines what they mean by "civilizing." "These conditions and the conditions," she mentions, "before this, are wealth [00:34:00] disparity," which I agree with, "declining trust in democratic institutions," yes, "heightened sense of victimhood, intense partisan estrangement, rapid demographic change, flourishing conspiracy theories, violent and dehumanizing rhetoric." so these are things that can create conditions like that of the Gilded Age or ours and a society that is on the brink of unraveling. "These conditions run counter to spurts of civilizing." I don't think I ever thought I would say the words "spurts of civilizing." That would be a really good ska band, Dan Miller, if you want to talk to me later about a little side project. "Spurts of civilizing in which people's worldviews generally become more neutral, more empirical and less fearful or emotional." I hate this sentence so much. I am trying to be professional. And I'm trying to like. I am so suspicious of the word [00:35:00] "civilizing" to start because it carries such colonial overtones of British, India, the Southeast Indian company --

The white man's burden.

Yeah. All of it. Algeria.

So civilizing to me is a word that I'm always like, do we need to be, is that the word? Is civilizing really the word to use? And then when you define it as people who are neutral, empirical, less fearful and emotional, it's -- I understand what you mean by empirical. Yes, I'm somebody who would like us to be empirical in terms of following science when it comes to vaccines and pandemics and gun violence. I don't know. You want people to be neutral? What does that even mean? Not emo-- I mean, Dan, we spent so much time talking about emotion and the disconnect with emotion that leftist and progressive -- and leftist is the wrong word, mainly liberals and neoliberals -- have with the American public.

Anyway, I'm going to stop. I hate this sentence. What do you think? [00:36:00]

DAN MILLER - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: It's why I laugh. My students in some of my classes, it turns into this kind of running joke because they like to see me just go apoplectic about a sentence that some author writes or something. And this is one of those that would do that.

I often say this: I think that -- I don't want to fall too far into the rabble here -- but I think that neutrality is maybe the most pernicious concept there is when it comes to talking about our social life together, when it comes to thinking about ethics, when it comes to thinking about politics. Because I don't think that neutrality is a thing. I don't think it's real.

And we know this. We know that beings, for example, empirical or data driven, are saying, I don't know, should we mandate vaccines? Maybe let's understand the science of it and public health and so forth. If there's anything the last few years have shown us, there's nothing neutral about that, right?

Anything can be politicized. And so even the notion that we should value all lives equally, that's not about neutrality, right? Because there are lots of [00:37:00] people who don't value all lives equally. The, notion that, I don't know, everybody should be able to use a locker room or a bathroom where they feel safe, that fits their identity, right? A place that they don't have to be worried about being assaulted or accosted or something like that. That's not neutral, right? That's a highly, I don't know if partisan is the right word, but it's a highly invested position to take.

What neutrality often does is mask the fact that social life is always about power dynamics, it's always about the distribution of resources, it's always about who gets to count as part of that society and who doesn't, who has access to rights and who don't.

And whenever I hear somebody decry a loss of neutrality, what I think that they're actually decrying is some structure of privilege that has now been threatened, that was masquerading as neutral.

So I'm really, really suspicious when I read that. I can't say all of that is present here. But if we had a lot more time and wanted to dig into this, I think we could.

So I'm so suspicious every time I [00:38:00] hear appeals to neutrality or objectivity, for all of those reasons.

The Health Care Crisis Is The Democracy Crisis - The Lever - Air Date 12-17-24

DAVID SIROTA - HOST, LEVER TIME: All of these indignities are the product of a government filled with politicians who are bankrolled by insurers, and who use their power to block the most basic reforms. Stuff like a public health insurance option, or an option to buy into Medicare, or simply expanding Medicare to cover everyone.

What's so frustrating is that politicians have spent decades, decades saying they recognize the problem, and they make promises to do something about it, and then almost nothing happens.

Think about the last 50 or 60 years of history. After JFK and LBJ's pressure resulted in Congress creating Medicare, the push for universal health care popped up in the early 1990s with the Clinton administration.

PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: Under our plan, every American would receive a health care security card, [00:39:00] that will guarantee a comprehensive package of benefits over the course of an entire lifetime, roughly comparable to the benefit package offered by most Fortune 500 companies.

DAVID SIROTA - HOST, LEVER TIME: The healthcare industry famously killed that initiative with a ton of lobbying and campaign cash.

And the healthcare industry profiteering continued, sparking outrage and new promises of reform from Democratic Party rising stars, like this guy from Chicago.

BARACK OBAMA: I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care plan. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14%, 14 percent of its gross national product on health care, cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that's what Jim's talking about when he says, everybody in, [00:40:00] nobody out. A single payer health care plan, universal health care plan. That's what I'd like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately, because first we've got to take back the White House, and we've got to take back the Senate, and we've got to take back Congress.

DAVID SIROTA - HOST, LEVER TIME: So there it is. There's Barack Obama saying he supports single payer. But when Obama himself took back the White House, with huge Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, his administration deployed its Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, to promise that single payer wouldn't even be considered in any health care reform.

KATHLEEN SEBELIUS: This is not single payer. As you know, there have been a lot of congressional advocates who say, Why not? Why can't we have a single payer? That's not what anyone is talking about. Mostly because the president feels strongly, as I do, that dismantling private health coverage for the 180 million Americans that have it, [00:41:00] discouraging more employers from coming into the marketplace is really the bad direction.

DAVID SIROTA - HOST, LEVER TIME: Eventually, what became the Affordable Care Act included massive taxpayer subsidies for the insurance industry, and Obama's promised public health insurance option being excluded from the final bill.

And though the Affordable Care Act did include some very important reforms, the health care crisis continued, as did Americans' anger, much of which was channeled into Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign for Medicare For All.

But that campaign ran straight into a wall, known as Hillary Clinton.

HILLARY CLINTON: And the bulk of what he is advocating for is a single payer healthcare system, which would probably cost about $15 trillion. It's a bit concerning to me because it would basically end all the kinds of healthcare we know. Medicare, Medicaid, the CHIP [00:42:00] program, children's health insurance, TRICARE for the National Guard, military, Affordable Care Act, exchange policies, employer based policies.

DAVID SIROTA - HOST, LEVER TIME: When Sanders' campaign nonetheless surged towards a win in the Iowa caucus, Clinton doubled down, insisting that Medicare For All was impossible, and that voters basically shouldn't ever expect anything better than the current healthcare system.

HILLARY CLINTON: Health emergencies can't wait for us to have some theoretical debate about some better idea that will never, ever come to pass.

DAVID SIROTA - HOST, LEVER TIME: By the time the 2020 election rolled around, even as researchers estimated that a Medicare For All system could have saved 200,000 lives during the pandemic, Joe Biden, by that point, was running for president on a promise to veto Medicare For All legislation if it ever got to his desk.

JOE BIDEN: I would veto anything that delays providing the [00:43:00] security and the certainty of healthcare being available now. My opposition relates to whether or not a) it's doable, 2) what the cost is, what the consequences for the rest of the budget are. How are you going to find $35 trillion?

DAVID SIROTA - HOST, LEVER TIME: Side note: The Republican-led Congressional Budget Office found that Medicare For All would actually save Americans $650 billion by 2030.

Biden did promise that one of his first initiatives would be a public health insurance option. But once an office, he never mentioned the idea again.

And then, of course, came the 2024 campaign, in which the healthcare debate was essentially this: [sound of crickets] That's right. Nothing. There was no healthcare conversation at all. A reality summarized by a New York Times headline, which read, "The campaign issue that isn't: [00:44:00] Healthcare reform."

Basically, in deference to their healthcare industry donors, both political parties message on healthcare seems to be that line from the doctor's office scene in the old Jack Nicholson movie.

CLIP: What if this is as good as it gets?

DAVID SIROTA - HOST, LEVER TIME: Not surprisingly, lots of Americans being bankrupted by healthcare simply don't accept that this is the best we can do.

Which raises the question, why can't we do better? Out of all the challenges facing our country, why does this one issue, decent medical care for everyone, seem to be such an impossible problem? Why haven't we solved this problem once and for all? How is it, as JFK once said, we are behind every country in this matter of medical care for our citizens? He said that more than 50 years ago. And we're still at this impasse. How [00:45:00] could that be? What will it take to finally get the humane health care system that we deserve?

Vigilante violence is not the solution. The solution is a renewed focus on using our democratic institutions to force lawmakers to change the system.

As the old saying goes, power concedes nothing without a demand. This past week's primal screams of outrage at the health insurance industry are the demands for change.

The health insurance industry is undoubtedly hoping that that noise quickly dissipates, like everything else on social media. But the rest of us need those demands to get louder -- right now.

Note from the Editor on the racist history of opposing universal health care

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips starting with Straight White American Jesus discussing the impact of the killing of the United Healthcare CEO. Serious Inquiries Only examined why the demands to condemn the murder helps perpetuate injustice. [00:46:00] The Majority Report discussed the difficulty of supporting good ideas that are being pushed by people who also support terrible ideas. The ReidOut looked at the potential impact of vaccine skepticism in the country. Straight White American Jesus broke down the arguments around decivilization. And The Lever dove into the history of the fight for universal healthcare.

And those were just the Top Takes. There's a lot more in the Deeper Dive section. But first, a reminder that this show is produced with the support of our members, who get access to bonus episodes and enjoy all of our shows without ads. To support our work and have those bonus episodes delivered seamlessly to the new, members-only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show at BestOfTheLeft.com/support -- there's a link in the show notes -- through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple Podcast app.

As always, if regular membership isn't in the cards for you, shoot me an email requesting a financial hardship membership, because we don't let a lack of funds stand in the way of hearing [00:47:00] more information.

Now I thought I would try something new, do a little experiment for a little while, and offer you the opportunity to submit your comments or questions on upcoming topics, not just the current topic or past topics. Since it takes us a little bit of time to do the research, I can actually give you a heads up about what's coming, so you can potentially join the conversation as it happens.

So next up, we're working on the topic of Trump antagonizing many allies of the US, often in bizarre ways, such as Mexico, Canada, and Greenland. And also we have just started thinking about a topic on the so-called "broligarchy" -- super wealthy Silicon valley and influencer bros who are all making waves in the MAGA movement. So, if you have thoughts on either of those topics, get your comments or questions in now for a chance to be included in the show. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at 202-999-3991, or simply email me to [email protected].

Now [00:48:00] as for today's topic, I thought I would just replay the comments I made during a recent throwback episode, which was going out during the holidays, in the immediate wake of the United Healthcare CEO killing. I thought I said what I wanted to say pretty well, and I figured not everyone will have heard it in a rerun episode, particularly in the middle of December. So here it is.

It's been pointed out by some that Thompson is survived by a family that loved him, as a way of highlighting the injustice of having the sins of an industry fall on the shoulders of an individual. It doesn't take too much imagination to realize that the vast majority of people who have suffered needlessly, weathered stress, bankruptcy, and sometimes died from having to fight a health insurance company to have their care covered, also have families that love them.

As far as I'm concerned, assuming for a moment that Thompson really was targeted for his role as CEO, rather than a personal grudge, he should be considered a victim of the system more than of the individual, because a health system as unjust as [00:49:00] ours is bound to cultivate such levels of resentment, that violence should be understood as a predictable outcome.

The biggest difference between Thompson and the healthcare victims of his insurance company is not that one was killed with a gun while all the others were killed with paperwork. The biggest difference is that Thompson was in a position to help change the system. One of our mantras here at the show is to aim higher. If you're angry at a customer service rep, aim higher -- the manager? Aim higher. The CEO? Maybe you're getting there. Is there anything higher? Maybe the Board of Directors. But ultimately, it's the system itself.

So I recognize that even powerful individuals within the system cannot singlehandedly change that system. But they can either work for change, or work to maintain their power, or resign in protest and work to rally change from the outside as Wendell Potter did, when he quit his position as a health insurance executive to become an [00:50:00] advocate for healthcare reform.

People are going to act with the power they have. If those with great power use it only to maintain it, rather than for the benefit of those they have the power to help, then the powerless can be expected to take action. Most will simply advocate for better policy through the proper channels. But it should be expected that a small number may turn to violence. This was inevitable. It's part of the system we've built and that Thompson helped maintain.

If anyone should be expected to understand a statistical analysis of expected outcomes based on a given set of circumstances, it's an executive of an insurance company.

SECTION A - RFK Jr.

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now we'll continue to dive deeper on four topics. Next up section a RFK Jr. Followed by section B Luigi Mangione, section C United healthcare and section D. Healthcare history.

The Dark History Behind RFK Jr.'s Health Policies Part 2 - The Majority Report - Air Date 12-11-24

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Let's talk about your latest piece in The [00:51:00] American P rospect first. Anyways, I want to start there, Dr. Strange Kennedy, and this notion, because I see this, I mean, you refer to it is how to worry, how you should learn to worry more about a liberal politics in liberal guys. I'm seeing this also too, in the context of of populism. And we see various people sort of subscribing to specific nuggets within the agenda of what we're seeing in this administration. Positively. Well, like, just give me a sense overall of what you're talking about here.

RICK PERLSTEIN: Well, I mean, I guess it would be kind of like, if we're going to go like reductio at Hitler, I am right off the bat. You know, Hitler built the Audubon kind of deal, right? Mussolini made the trains run on time, right? My bottom line is...

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: the KKK you cite the KKK promoting universal health care. And, what was [00:52:00] the other one? The...

RICK PERLSTEIN: Well, I mean the Kaiser of Germany, Kaiser Bismarck.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yep. Bismarck,

RICK PERLSTEIN: Wilhelm Bismarck was the guy who invented, unemployment insurance, because he wanted the working class to support him when he took over Africa and, mowed over the Catholics of Germany.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yeah. And I just want to say there's a version of this that I think they're trying to copy here on the right with Victor Orban, right? Where he offers some social services, and under the guise of trying to help people out, but it's really explicitly to reinforce, a patriarchal system anti LGBTQ system.

RICK PERLSTEIN: It's one of these old playbooks, right? And, the foundation of it that is, as I've been thinking about this, recently, and trying to put things together in a systematic way is that right wing politics whether it goes by the name conservatism or authoritarianism or what they used to, probably call in the early 20th century fascism, really is about hierarchy and authority, the right people being in control, people knowing their place.

And, if that's the bottom line, really, [00:53:00] the kind of policies that you use to get there are just tactical, ultimately. Conservatives have been for big government. They've been for small government, right? I mean, the first big government agency in America really was the FBI, what became the FBI, and it was kind of created out of a moral panic about white slavery, which was kind of like the QAnon of, the 19-teens, right?

They can be for social policy, or they can be against social policy. They can be for law and order, or they can be for, the kind of whatever it is that Trump does, where, like, his friends are all criminal are all innocent, and he's all criminals, right? So You know, in the case of a RFK Jr., a couple of points can be made. One is that, even though, a lot of what he says is very enticing and sounds quite humanitarian, taking apart Big AG, nailing Big Pharma to the wall, which is also a big part of Project 2025. Even though it sounds enticing, [00:54:00] it often means kind of eviscerating the kinds of institutions that it actually requires to do those things. But the other point I made in the piece is that actually, there's actually a long tradition on the right of this kind of purity, bodily purity politics. Which is actually one of the scarier kind of fascist traditions on the right. And I gave as you know the example from the early sixties the right wing crusade that held that fluoridation of water was a communist block, right?

So anyone who's seen Dr. Strangelove knows that hilarious scene in which the right wing general says that the communists are trying to sap our purity of essence. And have you ever seen a commie drink a glass of water, right? And I also gave the example of, back in the nineties when I was, researching Before the Storm. All of a sudden, Phyllis Schlafly, who I was yakking with on the phone, as one does.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Well just remind people who Phyllis Schlafly was, because I think you and I remember, but I'm not sure anybody else does.

RICK PERLSTEIN: Queen of the anti feminist movement of the 1970s, almost single [00:55:00] handedly defeated the Equal Rights Amendment. And there's a wonderful mini series about her Mrs. America that you can see on Hulu I think, maybe it was Netflix. Anyway, she was basically one of the most powerful reactionaries and successful reactionary organizers ever. And she died in 2016, a huge Trump fan. She kind of spans the era from McCarthy to Donald Trump.

And she was on the phone and she was just suddenly out of nowhere telling me about how pure the food was that she fed her children, right? So like health food, making fun of health food was a thing you made fun of the John Birch Society before hippies got ahold of it, right? So all these kind of scrambled ideological associations, shouldn't fool us to the fact that, RFK Jr. is a crazy conspiracy theorist. And if you actually kind of dig down into how he thinks about how we're going to fix the food system and fix the pharma system, it really is quite creepy in that it kind of [00:56:00] creates two classes of people. These kind of superior people and untermenschen, right? The superior people who eat the right foods, which are often, very expensive, right? Who do the right exercise regimes, which are also very expensive. Who take the right drugs, which, don't have anything to do with the democratic process of peer review, but are basically dictated from above often with people who have financial interest in those drugs, right?

So we look at that weird culture of, right wing food supplements and all that sort of thing. And they're superior, and we're all inferior for kind of messing around with this sort of rabble public health. The kind of stuff that evil people like Dr. Fauci, mess around with. Basically don't buy it. RFK could be the guy who presides over more deaths than a nuclear holocaust if he has his way. I mean, if we go back on something like the polio vaccine, one of the things I learned , recently, making these arguments on the dreaded [00:57:00] Twitter, is that it used to be when people were studying public health, or maybe they still do, students would go on walks of cemeteries. And you guys know why they, why public health professors would teach their students, take their students on walks of cemeteries on the first day of class? To show them what happened in the 1950s when the polio vaccine came about. That, how many babies died before widespread vaccination became a thing. So we're going to go back into this world where cemeteries are going to be full of infants if RFK Jr. and Donald Trump has their way.

Top ally of RFK Jr. petitioned FDA to revoke approval of polio vaccine - All In w Chris Hayes - Air Date 12-13-24

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, ALL IN: Joining me now is someone who has closely followed the anti vaccine movement, senior reporter for NBC News, Brandi Zadrosny.

It's great to have you here and I'm so glad to have you here because when this news went, I was like, oh, I have not heard of this guy. And you were like, I have heard of this guy. In fact, I know him quite well. Who is Aaron Seery?

BRANDY ZADROZNY: Aaron Seery, I like to think of him as the brains behind the anti vaccine movement.

Anti vaccine, um, Activists were largely an ineffective, um, group of folks, especially Robert F. Kennedy and his, uh, [00:58:00] communications director Del Bigtree, who runs the second largest anti vaxxer called ICANN. Um, they were just sort of like petitioning local governments. They were trying to get, you know, states to do away with vaccine mandates for children.

And they just wasn't working until they met. Aaron Seery. And Aaron Seery is a lawyer. He worked, has a New York law firm. And in 2015, he started dabbling in vaccine mandate for children cases. That got him linked up with Del Bigtree and with Robert F. Kennedy. And they started trying cases together. There was a case in Tennessee where a child was, um, they argued that the child had been affected by a vaccine and been caused to be autistic.

The courts did not find, um, that same thing. Uh, they disagreed. The court disagreed. Um, but so from there, Aaron Siri became the Um, but he has [00:59:00] raked in the cash, basically acting as part of a propaganda arm, filing crazy FOIA requests. Requests and then misrepresenting what those, the denial of those FOIA requests means for vaccines, filing lawsuits.

Like he was the man who overturned religious exemptions in Mississippi. He was the lawyer on that case, that sad, sad case in Mississippi. Um, he's all over. And, and then he was a huge part. Uh, I think 000 to represent, um, Kennedy and his campaign. You know,

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, ALL IN: one of the things that is striking here when you talk about this petition to revoke authorization is that the rhetoric they will use is we're pro choice, anti mandate, right?

Um, and here's, here's the times on this. Mr. Siri insists he does not want to take vaccines away from anyone who wants them. You want to get the vaccine, it's America, free country. He told Arizona legislators last year for laying out his concerns about the vaccine for polio and other illnesses. He did not mention the petitions he has lodged on behalf of ICANN, the organization he just said, with the FDA, asking regulators to withdraw [01:00:00] or suspend approval of vaccines not only for polio but also for hepatitis B.

Continuing, Mr. Siri is also representing ICANN FDA to pause distribution of 13 other vaccines. Combination products that cover tetanus, diphtheria, polio, and hepatitis. I mean, that's a, I mean, I think mandates are a good idea and I think choice is overrated in this aspect, but that is a long way from even that.

That's. Stop the government from like revoke.

FAIZ SHAKIR: It's all of them, Chris. It's all of the vaccines. There is not a vaccine that Kennedy thinks is safe or effective. These folks don't believe the polio vaccine actually stopped polio. They think it's true. They think it's a combination of sewage, better sewage of refrigeration.

Yes, absolutely. They are polio truthers. That is what they Robert F. Kennedy has told me this. And so Absolutely. They want to get rid of all of them and not just get rid of all of them. They say, we don't want to get rid of any vaccines. We just want to test them. Well, let's talk about what [01:01:00] their testing is.

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, ALL IN: Yeah. What is it? Because today Kennedy comes out with a statement being like, Oh, again, there's all this like weird doublespeak. Yeah. Oh yeah. We just, we should just, it should be studied. That's what he said. I was like. Yeah. I think we've got the studies, like, I think we've studied it pretty damn well. Do we have iron lugs in America?

No, we don't. Okay.

FAIZ SHAKIR: This is the only thing that we'll do for Kennedy and the folks that he surrounds himself with. These double blind, controlled studies, which means that he wants to get a big group of kids together and give, you Half of them, the vaccine and half of them not, but not tell anybody which is which and then determine on a longitudinal basis.

So follow these groups for 20 years, their whole life and decide if there's any more positive outcomes for the people who've gotten the vaccine versus not the vaccine backs versus unbacks. The problem is. Quite obvious with that, right? Who do you withhold the vaccine from? That is completely unethical.

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, ALL IN: Right. The other thing is that we do randomized control trials and double blind randomized control trials in the process of approving all the [01:02:00] time. That is how we get them. That's how we know if they're safe and effective.

FAIZ SHAKIR: A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And we can talk about like the trials that happen along the way and it's very complicated and that's why thankfully we have scientists and doctors and public health officials who study these things very, very closely.

And the problem is you have folks like Del Bigtree and Robert F. Kennedy and they're through their lawyer, Aaron Seery, who come and dismantle that using the courts as a weapon.

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, ALL IN: But this, I mean, this is not, it's one thing if you've got a guy filing things in court. This could be the general counsel at HHS.

HHS oversees the Food and Drug Administration, if I'm not mistaken, and the National Institutes of Health and the Centers on Disease Control. That guy is the chief lawyer and the brains overseeing the federal health infrastructure.

FAIZ SHAKIR: I wonder if he would let go of his payday that he certainly has right now to come work for the government.

But having said that, I do wonder that. But, um, I, It's [01:03:00] terrifying. Terrifying.

SECTION B - Luigi Mangione

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering section B Luigi Mangione.

These Guys Are SO Out Of Touch On Healthcare CEO Shooting - The Majority Report - Air Date 12-9-24

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And, and then that's where we can bring it back to what the reaction was.

The reaction of universal, like, meh, let them get away with it from a lot of people I think took some folks, liberals, by surprise. But also conservatives. Because everybody in this country has to deal with, unless you're incredibly wealthy, a for profit healthcare system that in some way has affected their family.

Maybe you, your family member had cancer and they had to go through all their savings to undergo treatment. Maybe you were denied care because of a pre existing condition prior to Obamacare, which by the way did ban that and the Republicans tried to repeal it, um, and you were thought you were eligible for this kind of surgery, and then you weren't able to get it.

But although that kind of stuff still happens to this day, just via other means as well, everybody has a kind of understanding about how [01:04:00] messed up this system is, unless you're a guy like Ben Shapiro. Now let's read the comments before we get to his commentary on this front. Um, he's not really ready to meet any of, uh, the real realities of the people in his audience that aren't making millions of dollars every year like he is at the Daily Wire.

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: That's his job not to.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Um, so his, his reaction, the evil revolutionary left cheers murder. We'll get to his reaction to Daniel Penny getting off in just a second, but anyway. These are some of the comments to claim. It's just it is just the American left. That's been cheering this on social media is delusional.

I don't know what you're trying to keep why you're trying to keep pushing. This is a left issue. It's clearly across the board. These are separate Ben Shapiro fans.

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Another one. I'll you could we can rotate a sorry Ben lifelong conservative and don't have an ounce of sympathy for the CEO. How many Americans have died because of this company's greed a very good question for even a lifelong conservative to wonder

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: [01:05:00] exactly.

Um, this isn't a party, uh, base issue. This is a class based issue. I don't like violence, but let's not pretend that the insurance companies haven't been committing some, blah, blah, blah.

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Matthew, agree with Engel's point there?

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I mean, go to his actual video and we'll see. Are these comments because, hey, Matt Bernstein of, uh, he screenshotted that on December 6th.

Today we're, it's December 9th. Perhaps the Ben Shapiro, these were not real Ben Shapiro fans, and now The real ones are trickling in to give up, give their guy support. Whoops. Nope. Uh.

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Top one. We got conservatives and liberals hugging each other in a comment section before GTA 6. Yeah. Saw my lifelong hard, this is, this is why people who think that there should be some kind of temperance about this.

Saw my lifelong hardworking father become bankrupt as a result of claims being denied after getting cancer. You are out of touch, man.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yep. I mean, we can ignore the one with, you know, like, that may, here we go, it's not left or [01:06:00] right, it's black or white, it's rich versus poor, your true colors are showing.

Um, the comment section is humanity making sense for the first time in years. Remember guys, Ben has more in common with that CEO than he has with any of us.

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: True of anybody in media who is trying to, uh, take this tack.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Um, Wow, I don't think I can justify supporting Ben anymore.

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I also just want to ask, like, hey, what were you thinking you were watching when you were watching Ben Shapiro?

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Well, they were in it for the racism and the resentment towards liberals, sure. But this is a universal experience for Americans. So now, with all of that context and with everything we've said about the systematized violence that our healthcare system really, In, uh, in genders and in bodies. Here is Ben's commentary.

Facts don't care about your feelings, he says.

BEN SHAPIRO: The real question in all of this is how Americans respond. So Taylor Lorenz, we talked about her yesterday. She is a psychotic former [01:07:00] reporter for the Washington Post and the New York Times. She's totally insane. She was insane on COVID.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: So you know what, Ben?

Here's why the comments section has a complete disconnect with what you're trying to do here. Is because he's trying to put Taylor up there because she's been, she's had some takes I disagree with, but, but largely, she's mostly just been an object for the right to hate on as some sort of liberal woman that they can attack.

He is trying to make it as, He's painting a narrative that it's just like these liberal women, coastal elite reporters that are, or people that you already have resentment towards are the ones that are making this case. But as was clear in his comment section, and as was clear in the reaction to this video, it's not just like that.

It's liberal Taylor Lorenz. It's your viewers.

BEN SHAPIRO: The Washington Post and the New York Times. She's totally insane. She was insane on COVID. She was insane when it came to the supposed predations of people on the right who ought to, [01:08:00] she said, be shut out of media and particularly social media. Now, she's

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: full scale.

So again, like there are certain takes, I've seen Taylor runs call people COVID deniers. I don't think we're COVID deniers. With regards to what she's saying about this, um, uh, Uh, issue. She's exactly right that the rage is justified. And I'll just say, when we're talking about people being, uh, I don't know, is what Ben Shapiro is saying, hysterical or lunatics.

Ben Shapiro said that the majority of the world's Muslims are terrorists, are radical extremists that want to kill people for believing in Judaism or Christianity. He is the hysterical loser in this proximity right now.

BEN SHAPIRO: out of media and particularly social media. Well, now she is full scale rallying in favor of the murderer.

So she tweeted yesterday on Bluesky, which is a weird left wing echo chamber form of Twitter. There was a [01:09:00] post put out by blue cross and blue shield, all about whether it was going to pay for anesthesia under its healthcare coverage. And she then tweeted out quote, and people wonder why we want these executives dead.

So openly. Cheering the death of Brian Thompson. That wasn't her only post. Somebody put out a statement saying, quote, Legislation idea. Healthcare executives and their families must be on the cheapest plan their company offers and they aren't allowed to seek other care. And she wrote in all capital letters, Endorse.

Then, she put out a post that showed a graphic of a happy star. A star with a happy face and balloons and the caption CEO down. And she wrote, Woke up to see this spammed in my group chats. She said, I am not alone, that other people were doing the same thing. Then she reposted a post from left wing agitator Ken Klippenstein saying, Today we remember the legacy of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

And what exactly was that legacy? He claimed denial rates by insurance companies. And of course, it's not just Taylor Lorenz, [01:10:00] socialist. It's your comment section. Nathan Robinson, a complete useless leech on the ass of society, posted himself, quote, Live your life in such a way that people will be sad when you die.

That was above a screencap of a New York Times headline. It's a torrent of hate for health insurance industry follows CEOs killing. That piece from the New York Times is all about people who apparently were perfectly fine with the murder of Brian Thompson on the streets of New York City. According to the New York Times, none of this stopped social media commentators from leaping to conclusions and showing a blatant lack of sympathy over the death of a man who was a husband and father of two children.

Thoughts and deductibles to the family. Read one comment underneath the video of the shooting posted online by CNN. Unfortunately, my condolences are out of network. A TikTok user wrote, I'm an ER nurse. And the things I've seen in dying patients get denied for by insurance that makes me physically sick.

I just can't feel sympathy for him because of all those patients and their families. Yeah. And these sorts of messages were incredibly common. But, sorry. Across the internet.

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I, uh, this is what people need to [01:11:00] hear that, uh, and I'll agree with Ben Shapiro's, uh, perspective on things. When you tell me, That I need to think about the families of that fucking, uh, freak.

Uh, I think, what my brain does, is think about all the people who lost somebody, or saw their dad go bankrupt because of decisions by these parasites. And just one thing to deal with the Blue Cross Blue Shield sort of pedantry thing, that I'm sure some people are in on, like, Actually, they wanted to do this, blah blah blah.

Not their fucking decision. They shouldn't exist. None of these institutions should exist. There should not, this is not an antitrust problem. This is a, there should be one insurance pool. And it should be controlled by the government. And no decision, whether it's technocratically good or not, is valid by any of these leeches, to use Ben Shapiro's word.

None of them.

Weekly Roundup Luigi Mangione and the End of Civilization Part 3 - Straight White American Jesus - Air Date 12-13-24

BRAD ONISHI - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: (The) author goes on to say, "Over the centuries, humanities become more civilized, largely drifting away from violent conflict revolution. And to be clear, I mean, [01:12:00] civilized in the spirit of Elias's definition, the process by which The use of violence shifted to the state and de-civilization to suggest a condition in which it shifts back to individuals." So, just to be clear, if you read the article the main source here is a 1939 book by a medieval scholar, a scholar of medieval Europe.

So A- there's been a lot of books written about medieval Europe since 1939, and it really is one of the, if not the only, source that's referenced in the entire article. Nonetheless, this idea of violence being shifted to the state, I think reflects the privilege you're talking about because you're basically saying, 'Well, society is civilized as long as the violence that the state perpetrates is not aimed at me or people like me. It may be aimed at those incarcerated at rates that are disproportionately high. It may be aimed at those who the state sends to bomb or to drone. It could be [01:13:00] any number of people, but as long as the state is doing the violence, it's okay.' There's nothing here that questions, like, whether or not that the state itself might be uncivilized because of the way that it commits acts of violence, whether internally or abroad. So I think that's there.

The author goes on then to talk about society reaching a point at which public, people publicly celebrate the death of a stranger murdered in the street. That is the point, Dan, of de-civilization. They do mention January 6th, the US Capitol, and people playing that down, but I'll just go to the end because we're going to run out of time.

So, you cannot fix a violent society by simply, let me actually read a different quote, because it's just too important. So let me just back up. Here we go. "In the weeks after a sharply divided election ahead of the return to power of a president who has repeatedly promised to unleash a wave of state violence and targeted retribution..."

DAN MILLER - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: Sorry, a wave of what kind of [01:14:00] violence?

BRAD ONISHI - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: Yeah, civilized.

DAN MILLER - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: State violence. Civilized violence. Yeah.

BRAD ONISHI - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: Civilized. Civilized violence. "And targeted retribution against his enemies. Also civilized, since he is the state. Americans have a choice to make about the kind of society we are building together." Now who's the we and who are the Americans, if not the state?

Is the state not the Americans? Okay. "After all, civilization is, at its core, a question of how people choose to bond with one another and what behaviors we deem permissible among ourselves." So, The state is civilized if it does violence, but we have to be civilized apart from the state and bond with one another and among ourselves, like some kids in a tree house whose parents are gone for the weekend, you know, figuring out what's permissible and what's not.

There really is this sense here of like the kids need to behave. If we want civilization to survive, because the state is going to do what it needs to do to survive, and that [01:15:00] may mean violence and retribution, as just mentioned. But we are the ones that really need to stick together here and not let things get uncivil.

Let me read one more sentence, Dan, and I'll shut up and it's all yours. The process of de-civilization may begin with profound distrust in institutions and government, but," children, sorry, the children was me. "That distrust gets far worse in a society where people brutalize one another. Take it away.

DAN MILLER - CO-HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: I don't even know where to start. So if I was like, I mean, you mentioned grad seminars, right? One of the things you would do is one of the things I say, this is not grad seminars. I work with undergraduate students, but one of the things I often say is don't make huge grandiose claims you could not possibly defend, right? I teach in religious studies. You teach in religious studies, which means you've gotten essays, Brad, that start the same way that mine do, sometimes, from students that say, "For as long as human beings have stared into the sky, they have pondered the..." I'm like, stop. Stop. You don't get to say things about all human beings, you don't get to say things about all time, you don't get to [01:16:00] make big statements about... right?

So, what the hell is civilization here? What qualified we've seen it's equated with the state. Here it seems to be equated with "the people," which seems to imply some sort of notion of popular governance or maybe democracy. That would lead into what Rousseau and others identify as the paradox of democracy and the people, right?

That a democracy can only work. With the authorization of the people, but the people itself is constituted by democracies. You have this kind of chicken/egg thing that comes along. We were making fun about the statement of Trump, right? Who's going to use state violence. If you're going to say that violence by the state doesn't count as uncivilized violence or somehow not violence, how can you criticize Trump if he has the mechanisms of the state, like on and on and on and on.

Another sentence that you didn't get a chance to throw in there says, "You cannot fix a violent society simply by eliminating the factors that made it deteriorate." Really? It seems like that would [01:17:00] be a really good place to start fixing a violent society, to me. You identify the factors that made it deteriorate and you address those factors.

I mean, maybe it's not going to be automatic and things like that, but it sure sounds like that would be something that you could do. Just on and on and on this is just a bunch of I think you know words that sound good; "civilization," "violence," "choosing to bond with another," "what behaviors we deem permissible among ourselves," and so forth.

A last point, back to this point about elitism and what counts, is a lot of Americans seem to deem mass shootings as permissible. They don't want to do anything to stop them. A lot of Americans deem transphobia and violence against queer people as permissible. They don't want to do anything about it.

Right? So don't give me this stuff that that just automatically makes us a civilized society just because there's some sort of majority view or consensus about, you know, what is permissible among ourselves. That's why I say this is not about neutrality or [01:18:00] any of that. My, my vein's going to pop on my forehead, so I'll throw it back to you to let you go apoplectic now.

SECTION C - United Health Care

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Up next section to see United healthcare.

Was United Healthcare CEO a Psychopath - Thom Hartmann Program - Air Date 12-9-24

THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Uh, three days after Brian Thompson was assassinated. The CEO of UnitedHealth Group, which owns UnitedHealthcare, uh, Andrew Witte, uh, told, uh, circulated a, uh, two and a half minute video, um, to his employees.

Uh, which is kind of bizarre. I mean, it's it's, uh, the independent is writing about it. Just Justin Rorlich. He writes, um, United Health Group CEO Andrew Whitty told underlings that their work was quote critical in preventing the U. S. medical system from providing quote unnecessary. care he claimed would eventually drive up costs to a quote unsustainable level as he complained about the quote vitriolic media coverage of the shooting.

Of course, he's talking about social media where, um, it seems I, I [01:19:00] haven't seen any official numbers. I'm not sure any, there's any official agency that tracks this kind of stuff, but it certainly seems to me like 10 of the social media posts I've seen that have to do with the assassination of Brian Thompson have been, Basically cheering on the shooter, which is a really sad commentary on the state of the American health care system that so many people are so angry about this system that basically has turned, you know, the fate and future of Americans lives over to, you know, unelected corporations who then extract literally billions of dollars in profits and pay their executives literally millions of dollars, uh, in order to, uh, uh, You know, have their profits, I guess.

The two minute 45 second speech, you know, as I said, followed the assassination. UnitedHealthcare reportedly has one of the highest denial rates in the entire healthcare industry, was last year sued, [01:20:00] I'm reading from the Independent here, for allegedly using a flawed AI algorithm to systematically deny care coverage to seniors.

That would be through their Advantage program. Aye. The Mr. Whitty told employees that Thompson was dedicated, uh, to the goal of United Health Care's mission, which he says is to truly make sure that we help the system improve by helping the experience of individuals get better and better. I'm guessing many, uh, United Health Care, uh, policy holders would, uh, disagree with that.

Probably many would agree with it as well. It's, uh, if you're not in the 32 percent who've been, or the, the, I don't know what percentage have had denials. It's apparently it's 32 percent of all claims. Um, but he claimed few people in the history of the U. S. healthcare industry have had a bigger positive effect on American healthcare than Brian.

And I can just see people kind of gagging all over the country as they, as they hear that. [01:21:00] He said, we guard against the pressures that exist for unsafe care, Or for unnecessary care to be delivered in a way which makes the whole system too complex and ultimately unsustainable. Well, the system is too complex and is unsustainable.

It's going to cost us 55 to 60 trillion over the next 10 years if United Healthcare and their peer companies continue to play the major role in providing our health care and paying for our health care. Whereas if we went to Bernie Sanders, single payer health care system, it would cost 32 trillion.

There's a big difference between 50 trillion and 32 trillion over a decade. There's a huge difference. By the way, we also learned that the backpack that the shooter left, uh, in Central Park apparently, had, uh, was filled with Monopoly money. Now what's that about? My guess, if I had to make a guess, and I suppose I might as well, is that he intended to sprinkle the money over the body of the guy he shot, but that he [01:22:00] just, you know, decided to flee instead.

Yeah. by way of saying, I'm killing you because of what you did for money. You know, we'll see. I mean, you know, in, in my, in my article today, there is a one sentence that I really struggled with. But ultimately, this is how I wrote it. Essentially, United Healthcare's CEO, Brian Thompson, made decisions that killed Americans for a living in exchange for 10 million a year.

He and his peers in the industry are probably paid as much as they are because there is an actual shortage of people with business training who are willing to oversee decisions that cause or allow others to die in exchange for millions in annual compensation. And this is a, this is a theme that, you know, we've delved into many times in this program, including with.

Uh, a number of guests who were psychiatrists, which is that, you know, there are studies that show that as many as one in five American CEOs are actually psychopaths, that [01:23:00] psychopaths become some of the most successful business leaders because they just don't care what their actions do to average people.

They only care for themselves and their company. They're singularly focused on that, which is, you know, in essence. Capitalism or corporate capitalism is psychopathic. It doesn't care. Corporations don't care what happened to their customers or what happens to the people that they interact with, or even their impact on the local community environment until or unless it impacts their profits.

It's the only context in which they care. And I think that you could correctly define that as psychopathy.

You Dont Actually Need to Condemn the Murder of the CEO Guy Part 2 - Serious Inquiries Only - Air Date 12-12-24

THOMAS SMITH - HOST, SERIOUS INQUIRIES ONLY: So just to, you know, I don't want to bum you out too much. It's sort of a happy ending for this person, I think. But this, this poor guy was a college basketball player, um, tall, athletic, you know, and I only say this because, you know, the contrast when, when, you know, terrible healthcare stuff happens is very sad.

Tall, in [01:24:00] shape, fit basketball player develops. severe ulcerative colitis. This is, this is horrible. This is just one of those bad fucking moral luck things. You know, it's just, it's just bad luck. This it's precisely the reason we should all want. To be covered health care wise, we should all want to be covered health care wise, because there, but for the grace of the fucking spaghetti monster, go I there, but for the grace of God, go any of us, we could just one day be like, boop, alternative, all sort of colitis or whatever, any number of things.

But in this instance, it's that this poor guy went from being a college athlete. To not being able to leave the toilet. It's, it's horrifying. It's, it's, it's absolutely horrifying. You know, bloody diarrhea 21 times a day. Uh, or more this poor guy, um, real, really shit stuff to, it wasn't even trying to make a joke, shit luck.

[01:25:00] I'll say, and like, this is, this is so sad. It's the kind of thing that like, if this happens to you, your life is so fucking ruined. You know, you go from living a normal life to like, this guy can't leave his house. This guy can barely function. This guy has lost weight. He's got other really bad, you know, there's all kinds of bad health outcomes from this.

Now you'll never guess what happened. See. United Healthcare was looking at their fucking spreadsheets, looking at their numbers, looking at their financials. It was like, Hmm, we love this part where people pay us money. Love that. That's great. Well, isn't that such a great part of it where they're like, Hey, we'll pay you money just because we want to hopefully someday get coverage for our healthcare.

That's awesome. A plus love that. We're looking at this other line item that says where we pay for people's healthcare, but that's, well, it's not as fun. We don't like that part. That part, it's like a, it's a red number. It goes down for us. We don't, we don't like our numbers to go down. And, uh, they identify in their spreadsheet.

This one guy on this Penn state health [01:26:00] plan was costing them a lot of money because he had a really bad condition. And so wouldn't you know it because of that. And because of nothing else, because of no medical reason, because of no moral reason, because of no good fucking reason, but because of a number reason, A bad number for them.

Lots and lots of money it's costing this this health insurance company. You know health insurance companies? The company whose entire purpose is to provide money when you need health care because what you've done and what others have done have paid into the system when you don't need it? Yeah, they don't like that second part, the part where they have to pay back out.

They don't like that. Ah, that sucks. Ouch. Owie. Don't like that part. Not as good as just receiving money. And so they found, started finding all kinds of ways to get rid of this guy. They're like, this guy's costing us a lot of money. If we can get rid of him, we're making more money. Now, what complicates this a little bit is, unfortunately, the only thing that was working for this guy, after going through lots of treatment, this guy's life was, again, ruined.

Imagine it. I mean, this is [01:27:00] ulcers, like, inflammatory bowel disease, ulcers in your digestive tract, it's got no cure, and ongoing treatment to alleviate symptoms, that's all you got. It's all you got. Otherwise this person, he lost 50 pounds, bloody diary up to 20 times a day, severe stomach pain. I mean, if you've experienced some, some small amount of this, you, it's, it's life ending.

I mean, just, if, if, if you have that kind of bowel pain, which I've had a time or two, uh, because of my, not this, but like other digestive problems I've had, you're not living, you know, you're not, you're just, You're just on the floor. You're just curled up. You're just waiting for it to go away. It's it's horror.

It's awful It's really sad and it's something that could just happen to fucking any of us And so like once again, that's a reason we should you know Have a system where anyone would be covered for the few unlucky people. There's no [01:28:00] moral thing This guy did there's no thing, you know, even if there were by the way, I wouldn't care But like for those who think there's always odd people always deserve it.

Nope, just You It happens. Shit happens. God, I keep accidentally making a pun. I'm not even trying to do it. Uh, stuff happens. Now, he goes through a lot of treatments. They don't, they aren't working because he has a severe case. For some mild cases, these treatments do work, you know, reasonable enough. When you have a more mild form of it, the normal medications might work.

This guy, wouldn't you know it, mathematically, there's always going to be some people who have the worst kind of thing. That's just how stats and people work and math and numbers. This person happens to be the unfortunate. Person who has a bad kind of this and so with a doctor who seems to be really good, they're trying to figure out what to do and eventually his doctor says, Okay, we've tried a lot of stuff.

We tried the usual stuff. Not working. This is awful. Let's try. A certain course of treatment that has potentially worked in other [01:29:00] cases, where you take these biologic drugs that I don't totally understand, uh, and pin in this for, I don't know, someone who knows more about this, I don't think these should cost so fucking much.

I don't know why they do. That's another question. Um, but that's a separate issue because for now, the important thing is these biologic drugs, as they call them, for some reason, they cost a shitload of money. There I go again, not even trying to do it. I just, I'm now realizing how much of my normal speech involves shit related words.

So I will try to cut that out. So I'm genuinely not trying to do it. Um, but for some reason, these costs a bunch of money and, um, another unfortunate thing. In order for this treatment to work, they have to do very high doses of them that are not the normal amount. So already, I'm sure anyone who's had experience with insurance companies is thinking, Wow, this is, you're fucked.

Like, because those exact things are the kinds of things that are very hard to get insurance companies to cover. It's a, it's not the usual drug. And furthermore, it's [01:30:00] two of not the usual drug. And furthermore, they're doing high doses. But here's the fucking thing. This works. It works. He tries this treatment.

This very expensive treatment and it works. The guy starts having a normal life. Can you imagine going from bloody shit 20 times a day, not living to having a life that's priceless for any human, for any person, uh, not priceless for an insurance company that has a cost to it. But wouldn't, but boo fucking hoo because hey, that's the job you're in.

That's the industry you're in. That's the sector you're in. Sometimes, you get people who do nothing but pay into your little system, to your little fucking scheme. They do nothing but pay you money all their lives, and then maybe they're hit by a car and die, never having used their health care treatment.

Do we ask for their money back from you? No, that doesn't happen. Sometimes health insurance companies, I [01:31:00] know this is hard to hear, but I got to give you a little, like, no nonsense brass tacks, you know, sometimes health insurance companies, you have the opposite where someone hasn't paid in very much, but they have a very expensive treatment and hey, It ultimately all works out in the end because mathematically you make sure it does.

That's how your business works. You make sure that you always make money. You mathematically make sure it's called whatever the factuarial tables or whatever the fuck that is. That's how you do it. You will always make money, but that's not enough. That's not enough for these companies. They always, because of capitalism, Have to be trying to make more.

And because of, you know, CEOs that get paid hundreds of millions of dollars in stock options and all that, they have to be trying to make more. How do you make more? Well, let's find a way to get rid of the ones that are on the other side of the thing. Don't want to get rid of the ones that just pay us money and then don't use the stuff.

That they're great. Let's find more of those. Um, but let's get rid of the ones where we have to print money out. Cause that isn't as fun for us. And so they start doing these reviews over and over this poor guy. Who's finally living his [01:32:00] life again.

These Guys Are SO Out Of Touch On Healthcare CEO Shooting Part 2 - The Majority Report - Air Date 12-9-24

BEN SHAPIRO: We discussed yesterday a Columbia professor who wrote something very similar. Unfortunately, bubbling under the surface of all this is something very serious. Really serious. What is that serious thing? The revolutionary left. It's creeping into the mainstream. Yesterday, we talked about liberals versus the left. Liberals are people who disagree with me on public policy, but aren't in favor of, you know, the murder of their opponents. The left is a different thing. The shooting of Thompson has unleashed a wave of evil from members of the left. Thompson was not a criminal.

He wasn't even an advocate of death, the way, for example, abortion or euthanasia advocates are. And by the way, murdering an abortionist or an advocate of euthanasia would be unjustifiable morally in a democratic system. Brian Thompson's great sin, according to these people, is that he was the head of a company that exists within a mix of private/public healthcare framework.

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Well, that's just one question. That actually led to get passed unremarked. Ben Shapiro cutting in close because I think they had to film it later where he said, by the way, don't go kill abortion providers. Violence has been used against abortion providers. [01:33:00] Where pro life movement is right now, it would not be if it wasn't for the use of violence.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yeah, and, I mean, let's just pull up his tweet from this morning because we had two breaking stories in these cases. Daniel Penny, who held down unhoused Jordan Neely on the subway for over five minutes in a chokehold, and that resulted in the death of Jordan Neely, has been acquitted after, like, nearly 24 hours of deliberation by the jury.

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: A long time for deliberation, I'll say that. Wrong decision.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yeah, I mean, it's a high standard, I understand, but yeah. Ben Shapiro, there's video of this, of Daniel Penney holding down Jordan Neely for over five minutes and it becoming clear as his body goes limp what is happening.

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Thanks to all the people who never ride the New York subway for telling us how to feel about that shit, by the way.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yeah "America needs more men like Daniel Penney. America needs fewer prosecutors like Alvin Bragg." So, [01:34:00] which one is it, Ben? Is killing somebody wrong? Is killing somebody wrong? Or, do you confer a humanity onto wealthy people, onto wealthy white people, that you don't confer onto someone like Jordan Neely, who has been failed by society, who has had issues himself, but whose humanity is no lesser than the United Healthcare CEO just because he's a wealthy person. And you see, like, this is the divide, oddly.

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yep.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Like, this is the real divide. And for all the talk of right wing populism, I think it's completely insincere because it's really Ben Shapiro's mentality is what Republicans really think and what right wingers, power players really think, but let's talk about the voters here.

If you are somebody who, is uncomfortable with the reaction to the killing of the United Healthcare CEO, but you are also somebody [01:35:00] who is making some case that Daniel Penney needed to get off and was innocent or was doing his civic duty for society. You're just a racist. That's the reality.

Because, you see the audience, his Ben Shapiro fans, they understand why. They've had that experience, and I'm sure some of them were cheering on Daniel Penney, and all of that, but they still, at the very least, at their core, know the pain that's behind our healthcare system. If you're an elitist and you're a racist, if you're having- you are pro Daniel Penney and then also like chiding leftists about their reaction and other people, just regular people about their reaction to this killing.

SECTION D - Health Care History

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally section D healthcare history.

The Health Care Crisis Is The Democracy Crisis Part 2 - The Lever - Air Date 12-17-24

CLIP: Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

DAVID SIROTA - HOST, LEVER TIME: Kennedy was recognizing a universal truth in human history. Social [01:36:00] stability, the rule of law, and civilization itself will eventually break down if a population is immiserated for too long while a handful of elites profit. And just two months after that speech, JFK honed in on the healthcare crisis in America, pressing for the passage of what would become Medicare.

CLIP: The fact of the matter is that what we are now talking about doing, most of the countries of Europe did years ago. The British did it 30 years ago. We are behind every country, pretty nearly, in Europe in this matter of medical care for our citizens.

DAVID SIROTA - HOST, LEVER TIME: Kennedy's speeches on the survival of democracy and the need for health care reform seem more relevant than ever right now. The connection between the two seems more obvious than ever. Think about what's happened in the last few [01:37:00] weeks.

All of a sudden, after the murder of United Health CEO, Brian Thompson, everyone seems to be talking about healthcare and yet a discussion of healthcare was almost completely absent from the presidential campaign. This is the democracy crisis staring at us in the face. A public that is rightly angry at a massive policy failure.

And yet politicians and the media making sure that that failure is not even being discussed in the election that's supposed to be where we the people make our voices heard. It all feels like what JFK was warning about. As evidenced by all the anger expressed at health insurers after the shooting, many Americans clearly believe that elections and the political process have become so corrupt, so overrun with health care industry campaign cash, and so broken, that [01:38:00] democratic institutions like Congress and the White House have become obstacles to fixing something like the health care system. And that has prompted some to cheer on vigilante violence.

CLIP: The shooter got out from behind a parked car, pointed a gun at Thompson's back, and then shot twice.

DAVID SIROTA - HOST, LEVER TIME: Let me be absolutely clear. Extrajudicial murder is not good. It's not laudable. It's not justified. Violence is not justifiable. The shooting is not something to be cheered on. There is no rationalizing, excusing, or honoring murder. And there is no virtue in getting yourself social media clicks by cheering that kind of thing on.

Nobody should be valorizing anyone who engages in vigilante murder. Democracy and civilization itself is based on the idea that we do not settle our differences through violence against people we disagree with. [01:39:00] Violence is not only vile and immoral, it makes it more difficult to achieve progress. But I also fear that JFK's warning is relevant here.

While the shooting is deplorable and heinous, and unacceptable and counterproductive, I fear it's also an example of the kind of chaos that may become inevitable in a country whose political establishment has spent decades tearing up the social contract, legalizing and normalizing another kind of violence: Murder by Insurance Industry Spreadsheet. Murder by Spreadsheet may sound like an exaggeration. But it IS our reality. Right now, studies suggest around 60,000 Americans die every year because they lack access to decent medical care. We have insurance companies using artificial intelligence to systematically deny their customers medical claims, even as the [01:40:00] average family premium in an employer based health care plan now costs more than $25,000 a year.

14 years after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, 100 million Americans face a combined total of $220 billion of medical debt as just one of many horror stories. A recent study found that 42% of cancer patients see all of their life savings depleted within two years. This is horrendous for most Americans, but a jackpot for the health insurance industry.

As The Lever reported this week, the largest insurers raked in $371 billion in profits since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, and they also spent $120 billion on stock buybacks, enriching their shareholders and their executives. Amid increases in premiums and increases in [01:41:00] claim denial rates, seven health insurance CEOs were paid $335 million in a single year.

Credits

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: That's going to be it for today. As always, keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about today's topic or our upcoming topics: Trump antagonizing our allies, and the role of the billionaire bros on our politics. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at 202-999-3991, or simply email me to [email protected].

The additional sections of the show included clips from The Majority Report, All In with Chris Hayes, Straight White American Jesus, The Thom Hartman Program, Serious Inquiries Only, and The Lever. Further details are in the show notes.

Thanks to everyone for listening. Thanks to Deon Clark and Erin Clayton for the research work for the show and participation in our bonus episodes. Thanks to our transcriptionist quartet, Ken Brian, Ben, and Lara for their volunteer work helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work behind the scenes [01:42:00] and her bonus show co-hosting.

And thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships. You can join them by sending up today at BestOfTheLeft.com/support, through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple Podcast app. Membership is how you get instant access to our incredibly good and often funny weekly bonus episodes, in addition to there being no ads, and chapter markers in all of our regular episodes, all through your regular podcast player. You'll find that link in the show notes, along with the link to join our Discord community where you can also continue the discussion. And don't forget to follow us on any and all new social media platforms you may be joining these days.

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#1679 The Middle East War Process: Syria's Transition, Israel's Expansion, and Beyond (Transcript)

Posted by · December 28, 2024 9:25 AM

Air Date 12/28/2024