Alsome Media. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.
Hello, and welcome to It Can Happen Here podcast about things falling apart and people putting them back together. I am back after us for a lengthy court battle, have been allowed to return to the podcast, which I'm very grateful for. And I'm joined today by John and Haval, two friends of mine who volunteer out here in Cucumber a lot, a lot more than I do, and we're going to explain some developments that have happened, give you all an update on the situation here, and let you
know how you could help soon. Welcome to the show, both of you.
Hello, thank you, good to be back.
Yeah, welcome back. If you'd like to just introduce yourself, like your name, like whatever role you play out here, pronouns and any affiliation with any organization you feel is relevant.
So my name is John. I'm someone that lives in the area. This situation just kind of showed up in my backyard. I was kind of forced into it rather than volunteered into it, and I've been dealing with it NonStop since the beginning. Yeah, I'm one of the main sets of boots on the ground.
Have all I used, they them pronouns, and I organized with Direct Action, Drumline and Zene Distro doing a lot of mutual aid, which is how I got involved in all this, and also with Alo Gelato helping out on the ground since the beginning with John, pretty much just a little after John started.
So yeah, so that's what nearly six months if you're not counting me. Yeah, yeah, wow yeah.
So yeah, it started in May and then it stopped during the summer time. It picked up again in September, and we've been dealing with it NonStop.
Since the people have heard briefly from John's father Sam in our May episodes about Title forty two, which we did. Yeah, it seems like forever ago. It also doesn't seem like very long ago. It's just one big weird collapsing of time. So last time we spoke, last time I spoke with Haval, we had this situation where we had three distinct concrete camps right adjacent to gaps in the wall, which volunteers were servicing with food, water, warm blankets, were building shelters,
and we've heard a lot about those camps. Does one of you guys want to explain how things have changed since then, and really particularly in the last six weeks.
So, yeah, it's changed quite radically.
Actually, So between the months of September and December, we were servicing these three camps kind of more or less in our immediate area.
It was pretty straightforward.
Our routine would consist of stopping to each camp two times a day and feeding people, providing them with all of the different things that the US government was not and I kind of wish things were simpler like they were back then.
Yeah.
So at the end of the month of December, Secretary Blincoln made a visit to Mexico, and I suspect that he pressured the Mexican government to police our border for US.
One of the immediate changes.
That we saw as a result of that was the foundation of two Mexican National Guard camps at two of the gaps that feed into those camps in our area, and that has basically stopped any people coming through those areas. This has not made any less people come into the country. Actually, the numbers have been fairly consistent. It's just that people have been forced to go in through other areas. So there've been many many new oads that have popped up
west of us. We have to drive quite a bit further into towards San Diego to go and service those areas, the main one being Sliders, which we're seeing about two hundred people come in sometimes in a night.
It's it's not a good scene.
Whereas those three ones that we were originally servicing had dumpsters and porta potties at the very least.
Yeah, they still do.
They still still there exactly.
Yeah, I'm moving at the speed of government.
The new ones don't have that and people are having to spend Well, how long were the people there most during that crazy, crazy time, just like a few days ago. I think they were up. They were there for up to like nineteen hours.
See it going on a day right now. Yeah, because we first to back crack to people like we heard from a member of the community that there have been people seen held there right at sliders. And then we went out there and we kept finding like warm fires, like where people hopefully been there and built fires. We could see where people have scavenged to brush, and a.
Lot of documents ripped up around there.
Yeah, the little hill signs, Yeah, yeah, all these signs, And so we were able to use that to suppose that was a place where people were and then I guess was it. Eventually someone stayed the night there and that was what allowed us we bumped into people there. Someone bumped into people there.
Well, we have an acquaintance that's been very helpful towards the cause that lives just close by to there, and he's kind.
Of one of the one that sounded the alarm.
And from there, it's like you said, it's a lot more difficult, right, Like it's probably a thirty minute drive. It's a steep off road, so like when it rains, it's hard to get to, So that makes it more difficult for us to provide stuff for people there. And like, I guess people should realize that we didn't find out about this because Border Patrol called us and said like, hey, there are people here without food, water, or show they don't do that. But yeah, that's not a thing that they did.
We actually did one.
Another volunteer, Brendan and I were driving out and we.
Stopped on the road.
I don't think you were with us, John, but we started talking to one of the agents because there was two or a group of people from I think Egypt. That was the day everyone did the mass exodus from one seven seven. So we stopped and we're talking to one of the agents and he did slip that there was another camp. He didn't name it, didn't say where it was, he just said it was that way. And that was around the same time that Morgan had mentioned
it to us. So it's you know, we kind of pulled it out of this agent because we were talking very nonchalantly with him and he was being generally nice.
But yeah, they don't tell us about this stuff.
Yeah, and we have to find him myself. And what I think that brings up is that there are potentially.
More, right we think know for a fact there are.
We know that there are more, and like I think it's obviously people and people think of California and I think of La and I think of San Diego and they think of the beach and like pleasant weather. But can you explain, like, it's been really cold out here. I'm pretty miserable right with the wet weather we've been having.
Pretty unknown part of southern California. You know, we're a mountainous region just just east of San Diego, within San Diego County. It's I mean it's not it's not crazy high. It's you know, it's about on an average of three thousand or four thousand feet above sea level. But yeah, it gets very windy over here, gets very unpleasant. It often drops down of freezing.
Yeah, and that's if you're out there all night and you have any shelter and any anyway to get warm and you're potentially wet from crossing a river or crossing a stream that often pops up in the desert. Can be a really miserable situation. So, like, it's important that these people receive help. And right now it's just through word of mouth and the local community that we're able to find them right and give them that help.
Yeah.
Yeah, So going forward, like we've seen like this movement of migration west, what does that mean for the ability of volunteers to provide services to migrants, And what does it mean for the safety Like you said that the push factors haven't changed, right, So people are still coming here. They still have things to get away from that lead them to come here, but they're not coming the same way where we could so easily help them in these three concrete sites.
So like, what does that mean, Well, it's uh, takes a lot more time out of our day just to drive there. For one, the main one, Sliders is up a very shitty road.
Yeah, so I think they call it sliders because it's so muddy and slidy over there when you're trying to be Yeah.
I put someone's head into the roof of my trucks driving that so long ago.
Yeah, And uh, you know, we're not the only ones that are displeased with this. It's more it makes the life for the border patrol more difficult, makes life for the emergency medical services more difficult, and of course it makes life for the migrants more miserable. And the owner of the property and the owners of the property in which they're hosting these you know, detaining these migrants.
Yeah, we I think every single one has been on private property, so far right. And I think we spoke to most of the property owners at this point and it just seems to come out of the blue at them. It's it's very.
Strange, permission is never sought.
Yeah, and I think one of them is suing the Border Patrol for it, but fake months. But obviously it does have an impact on a landscape as well. People understand to be a coal so they're cutting down whatever they can to burn to make shelter, to make their experience a little bit less miserable.
So that's the Yeah, that's that's kind of a.
Bargaining tool that we try and use when trying to convince the property owners to allow us to build shelters over there. It's just to try and convince them that it'll be good for them to have migrants not be in a position to be forced to have to cut down the vegetation on their land and trash their land. And you know, by allowing us to build shelters on their property and give firewood to the to the to the migrants that are being held on their property, it's better for them in the long run.
Yeah.
And the first time we went out there, they had created these shelters by just ripping brush and creating these like semi circles that were maybe about a footage.
Some of them are very impressive. Yeah, yeah, like.
Two three feet high and it was nice, you know, and enclosed, so they had some sort of shelter. But yeah, they had to rip all that from the vegetation around the area, which just ruins the ecosystem there, I'm sure.
Yeah, and it must tear up your hands as well. It goes slowly bushes and stuff. Yeah, yeah, it's not desirable for anyone talking of things aren't desirable. We unfortunately have to take an advertising break, so we will do that. Hit some stuff that you don't need. All right, we're back.
Those are some products and services. Now we're going to talk about the way John being very local to Kumba, right, how it is like organizing in a rural community, and the way that obviously you have people of very disparate political leanings in the area, and like how you've managed to like phrase what we're doing and to organize in such a way that the very least people aren't like actively pissed off at you.
Yeah.
So, first of all, I'm a Quaker, come from a Quaker family, and first and foremost, I am doing this for religious reasons, and I like to try and remind people of that. So when people try and come at me with anti immigrants sentiment, I just try and remind them that, you know, this is basically what you're supposed to do according to the Bible, and you know, to hate on any of these people is very Unchristian, and when I do so, it's very hard for them to
come at me with any of that stuff. But still, yes, for the most part, the community over here have not been very helpful towards this. They have not been very enthused with all these migrants coming in, and you know, they've been very regrettably misinformed about it all. They're still looking at various crazy sources for their new use, like YouTube channels and stuff like that, and it's kind of kind of hard to believe. It's like, you guys live in the area. You can just drive straight out there.
You can talk to me a person that you guys know, yet you still choose to look up all these various whack jobs on YouTube.
Yeah. Yeah, we've had something of a problem with the YouTube people, right, Like, there's a whole info, a whole ecosystem of right wing YouTubers that I think probably most folks don't know about, even if you take an interest in other like right wing conspiracy stuff, as a whole ecosystem of right wing border YouTubers who have been I mean, describe what you've seen.
Right, We've had like a new right wing fascist out every day.
It seems there's Oreo Express, Anthony Aguero has been out here, JLR Investigation JLR, Roger Ogden.
Was out here the other day. Classic.
It's kind of calmed down though in the last last couple of days.
But there was a period in late February where it seemed like they were coming out every single day.
Yeah, just a different guy in a different lifted jeep.
Yeah, exactly, just after that whole border what was it that.
Take back our Border?
Yeah, yeah, I got them all raled up to come out.
Actually, what really set them off to be aware of all of this is when Fox did their big piece out here and they were out here for multiple days.
Yeah, that's what kind of like turned on the tap.
Yeah, and that's very common anyway you go on the border, right, like Fox has a border reporter Bill Malugan. People will be familiar with Bill Malugan from publishing a story in twenty twenty which suggested the police officer had a tampon used tampon put in his Starbucks coffee, which was demonstrably false and didn't really very much look like a tampon. You can google more about that if that's interesting to you.
But like someone who preps should have lost a generalistic credibility at that point, is now doing border reporting for Fox. And this is when I speak to people all along the border right here Arizona, Texas. Yeah, the stuff that Fox puts out very strongly correlates with anti migrant sentiment, both both locally and with like these these folks coming in and streaming and they're always asking for donations, right, Like it's not a then they're they're not like advert
funded or like publicly funded like that. They're funded by donations for what.
Yeah, well, I forget the channel that Aguero is on that he's constantly asking for the nations and like.
Oh, thank you, you just dropped ten dollars, thank you for the five spot.
Other of like they're.
Sitting in his car ling'. That's what they're grifters.
That's that's what they're out there for every it seems like a third of their broadcast time is spent asking for donations, right.
Yeah, Yeah, it's like a like a charity stream excepted so it's the opposite of charity, I guess exactly, So pay me to do hateful things streams. Yeah, And I think like that as we get, as we look between now and November, I think it's really important that, like, the border will be a topic that people who never come to the border will argue about constantly between now
and November. Right, Fox News will have reporting on it, NBC will have reporting on it, like, and both of them will have reporting that isn't anchored on what we see every single day out here, which is a whate variety of people from whatever the world who are having a very difficult time right here and need our help, right and we're doing what we can to help them.
So I guess what, like, people who are listening to this will in the next I don't know how long it is to a November, what six months, seven eight months, they'll have conversations with their family members, with their friends, with people in bars, whatever regarding the border. What do you think they should know about, like, what we're seeing, and like because there's this whole border invasion narrative, right,
and like, this is not an invasion. We were just out joking with some people and helping them get their firewood prepped. Like these people are not a threat.
I think people often make the mistake of considering this issue to be a political issue. It really is just
a humanitarian issue. Vast majority of the people that I've talked to have very legitimate reasons for needing to time into this country, whether they're from Ecuador, you know, you know the situation over there recently there were gangsters that took over a TV station, Or in Guatemala, where I spoke to a man who told me that his children with college degrees can make enough family money to feed their families, or even in Afghanistan where people have literally
had the Taliban threatened their families lives.
The same with and the Iatola escaping.
Kurdish people in Turkey. I mean, the list goes on.
Or you know, climate refugees like the Mauritanians that we just spoke with earlier. Yes, they're they're coming, and they have really reasonable grounds for asylum over here.
Yeah, and it wouldn't be such an quote unquote invasion if they were just allowed to walk through the port of entry. This it's this process is so silly because they cross. They could just do this all at the port of entry. They really could be safe. The policies just choose not to do this. Yeah, that's the part that really doesn't make sense. It's like we're letting them in anyways. Why do we need to make their lives so uncomfortable, you know and dangerous?
Right? Dangerous?
I mean, John, you and I were on a water drop maybe two months ago now six weeks ago in slightly west of here, right, do you remember? We were driving down to where we're going to get off, and we met that family from Guinea. There was like, do you want to just describe what you saw because I think it was like, at least for me, that was like I've seen it a lot, but it still emotionally affected me.
So yeah, there was a there was a Guinean woman and her kid. I think he might have been like what four or something three three? Yeah, and there was also a Nigerian woman and you know, Nigerian speak English and Guineans speak French. They weren't really able to communicate with one another, and yet they were still traveling side by side because they they just teamed up because they were in a desperate situation together. One of them was was she and sandals.
One of them didn't have shoes at all.
Didn't have shoes at all.
Right, yeah, yeah, it's six weeks is a long time, you know what you're doing.
Yeah, well, you see horrible things every day.
Yeah, it's been a very eventful time. Yeah, every day feels like a news story.
Yeah.
Yeah. And they just kind of sat on the.
Side of the road and uh, we're out of breath, and they were just basically asking us to help them.
Yeah. I remember the little girl because we were obviously concerned with the lady who didn't have shoes and trying to help like bandage her feet and stuff. But then I remember the little girl just wasn't saying anything, and I suddenly realized, oh, this little girl is probably very cold. She was like, you know, early, like mildly hypothermic.
Yeah.
So I had her wrapped up in a little mylaud blanket with me to warm her up. And it's just, I know, it's just for one reason or another, that was a moment where I was like, why on earth are we doing this to a three year old? Like what what possible reason could there be this three year old girl to have hypothermia here and like the country in the world.
Who could possibly agree that this is a good thing? Yes, yeah, Or another experience I had in the beginning of February where there was this Colombian man who was in tears, who approached me and told me that his daughter was very, very ill, and he dragged me over to a porta potty and she was there, bundled up with like nine
blankets or something, not really responding to my questions. He was trying to contact nine to one one, but the responder on a nine to one to one or the dispatcher didn't speak Spanish, so I had to communicate with them and navigate the whole situation. Turns out she did have hypothermia. Yeah, but the ambulance would not take him along with the mother and the child to the hospital. So again it's another case of family separation. Who knows
what might have happened. They would have gotten processed separately. He could have ended up in Louisiana and she could have ended up in Riverside or somewhere.
Yeah, and at that point, once again, it's not the government or your tax is it were paying for those people to be reunified, right, that's work that's done by
NGOs and modern trey organizations exactly. Yeah, despite the massive amount of money we spend on And we were just talking the other day about how they like the architectural marvel of sections of the border wall right where they've poured concrete at like a forty five plus degree angle and spent millions of dollars for every yard of that, and we don't have enough money to give this three year old girl a blanket or to get that family back together.
It's pathetic, it's it's yeah, it's mind boggling. Yeah, even today with that dude from Brazil. He came up to me when we first got here, they were starving, wanted food, water, and he was like, I'm sick, I have a fever. So I hooked him up with some cold medicine that we had in our medkit, and then later when we went back to do the second round of feeding, he got more food and he was like, thank you so much.
We're starving.
We were told to when we were dropped off to wait in the mountains at six pm to six am, so they were just hadn't really I don't know if they were on the American side yet or how that worked. Didn't really describe it, but had to wait in the mountains before crossing, and so people are getting sick out there.
We ran into that dude with.
The dog bite on at at one seven seven. He was just so we we always go check this one camp because there hasn't been out since Squaddi and SNL have put their camp on the other side. There hadn't been a whole lot of people crossing in this area, but we go check it periodically. In one morning, yeah, we saw this man hobbling towards us as we're driving down the road with a stick and we're like, why is he walking like this? Pulled over and he was
bitten by a dog. He said he went to take a drink of water and some dogs attacked him, two dogs.
I think.
Yeah, he'd described it to the wolf, right, yeah.
Yeah, So we called the MS and they picked them up and took them to the hospitals.
Right, but you hadn't been there. It's a long way to walk with a dog bite in your.
Leg Yeah, and who knows, Bordevite might not even even if ems them out. They might have just tried to process them with the dog bite.
Yeah get it could have gotten infected or infect toward us.
Yeah. Yeah.
But just to go back on the mutual aid question that you had earlier, it hasn't all been negative. It's actually been a really great experience in which I've met really great people from all kinds of walks of life who have just joined together because they see a problem and know that they're the only they're the only ones that can make a difference. And it is a sure easy way to be really important and make a difference
in other people's lives. You don't really need to have much more than a good heart and a willingness to work.
Yeah, Like, I think we should talk about that more because not that some of us had some prior life experience right working with refugees or migration, but I think most of us just were people who were like, yeah, this isn't right, and I am able to help, and so I'm going to help. So can you talk about
like how people can help? And then, like you said, I think I've actually got a lot out of this and that I feel more affirmed in my belief that we can look out after each other without the need to control each other, and like we don't necessarily need people with guns and badges to create a society that cares for people who need taking care of. So prep you could describe like how people can help, and then what it is that you've got out of this that keeps you wanting to do this.
Well, first of all, yeah, we don't.
We don't have a clear structure of authoritative structure over here. It's we take ideas as a collective. Different people have contributed different things. There's a woman that really nailed down the PB and J making system and we've all just been following her lead.
There.
Some people came up with the idea of having a cell phone charging station.
That was you, And uh, it's just the list goes on.
And if you wanted to help, you could just come by to the border, come to one of these sites and just start distributing food or teaming teaming up with us somehow, or by donating to the GoFundMe.
Yeah, what's the good fund Me?
John?
So it's a go fundme that was set up by my by my dad I don't actually know what it's titled Cucumba Migrant Aid.
Go fund Me had Cumba Migrant eight.
It comes up Samuel Schultz. I think is by Samuel.
Schultz, so you'll know because it has like fifty thousand dollars on it and like maybe seven woods as a description. It's like Google because not much else is going down here, I guess. But yeah, people can help that way, and we've had people come who listened. We had two people this morning right who'd heard about it on the podcast and it come and helped. Yeah, and it made a really really great difference.
Yeah, they camped out at the Sliders and really held it down, which is really important. I mean for some of us, we you know, like John and I, we kind of do like a morning shift where we get up really early and make sure to do everything that we need to do, prepping sandwiches, checking on all the camps. But a lot of people come in in the middle of the night. Sliders had people come in what at midnight or one am?
Oh yeah, all throughout.
A group came at midnight, a group came at like one am, and then there were also more that came at four am.
Yeah, so like having someone on site camping, you know, making sure that people's needs are met and that if any emergencies take place, that they're taken care of, and it's just that smiling face when they get here.
It makes a huge difference.
Like that dude from Brazil, like earlier he was saying to me, he was like, thank you so much, Like this is like this is humanity right here, Like I'm a human and I'm like, yes, we will treat you like humans here.
Like at the end of the day, you know, these people coming through Central America and Mexico, they go through so much, you know, extortion, people ripping them off, just feeling unwelcome throughout that whole voyage. Yeah, just having a group of people welcome them into the country and treat them with dignity is worth more than any bottle of water or sandwich that we can give them. And you know, that's that's the main thing that we're doing.
I would say, I want to emphasize that people can help in so many ways that you can send us stuff, you can send us money, or you can just show up. If you just have a weekend that's totally fine, or a day it's totally fine. Or if you just want to come and make sandwiches, that's totally fine. Like like it, We're a very diverse group of people, and some people
have had more time than others. But yeah, everyone I think is valued, and like you said, I think like we're the way that we organize without anyone, like we organized horizontally has allowed us to be so much better. Like do you remember the day there was a day when we ran out of plates and we we were like down in Willow and it was just it was like chaos. And then someone who just arrived that day was like, oh, what if we put the beans in
a sandwich bag and give people? That was actually Peter, who's back now after going on rowing it for a while. But yeah, like if we had been like, no, I'm in charge, we've been doing this for longer, then those people wouldn't have got fed, right, But because we were like willing to listen, then the people got fed, and like we were all happier because the people got fed, right,
Like it worked better that way. So like as things change, because like border patrol have said explicitly that they're trying to push people west, right, what do you think, like what do we need going forward, what do you see like the situation being, and like it would be good to explain the context of like the changing seasons here as well.
Yes, so I think what we're going to see more of is people that are crossing in unorthodox areas, more people that are hopping the fence, more people that are cutting holes in the walls, just popping up all over the place.
So, yeah, it would be great to have eyes.
Along the border, people that are willing to travel up and down along the border to find out where these people are coming through, because for the most part, we don't know a lot oftentimes where these people are coming through. There are a couple of new oads open air detention sites that are relatively close to us that we can't find even.
Right, Yeah, like maybe if we had a super fancy drone we could find them, or just boots on the ground, nice road vehicle. Yeah yeah, yeah, then these are all things that cost money that we don't have. But like we've all put lots of miles on our trucks and lots of miles on our boots trying to trying to help out.
My exhaust is falling off all these bumps.
Yeah, my transfer case to competing. But like, yeah, if we had more people, some of us could focus on feeding people here because there was how many people were there when we just left now one hundred and twenty something like that.
Yeah, oh no, actually probably more if you count the new group. I think you know what a conservative estimate.
Would have been maybe one hundred and forty.
Yeah, So that's we'd made one hundred and forty sandwiches to feed them today, and we'd chopped firewood and taken that out and we'd be given all that out right. That was after the same thing at breakfast time. That doesn't leave much time to go meander along the border and look for another site. So if we had more people, we could do that and that would be really valuable.
Also, if you have connection to firewood.
Yeah yeah, yeah, if you're a person who can bring us a lot of firewood.
We have one homie right now and breaking his back.
For us.
So yeah, that's a definite big need out here.
Yeah.
Is there other stuff like that that people who maybe aren't here but have connections to or they could they could send that's particularly needed.
A nice off road vehicle, got one lying around.
Firewood is definitely a big thing. That's that's a huge need.
Yeah, it's getting really cold up here, and especially in like sliders too.
I think it's higher in elevation, so.
So exposed to there's nothing between you and the wind. Yeah. Yeah, it's very cold out there.
Yeah.
But and and just other things that are that are easier for us to get, but we just constantly need, such as breads, blankets, bread.
Yeah, yeah, tents, all these things.
Right.
The wind and the sun destroys everything that we've stockpiled after a while, and we have to keep rempanking the wheel. And then sometimes borter patrol destroys our stuff as well, or sometimes some some chubs come and destroy our stuff, which oh, the chuts destroying our Yeah, we should talk about the destruction of the shelters before we finish, I guess, just to end on a sad note. We was happy,
not because we built them again and they're fine. So there were some shelters I think mostly they were ones that had been built. What they were ones that have been built volunteers. Yeah, and what joh and you saw what happened to those shelters.
Right, Yeah, So we built some shelters at one of the sites at one of the main sites. You know, it was very simple just by having of plywood as the frame holding it up and then nailing down some tarps on it with batons. It was It was a nice thing. It stood up to the heavy winds that we have here very well.
It's incomparably better to not having a shelter there.
Oh yeah, it's a completely different They're instantly use once people across and it's awesome to see, like adults that are alone will get out and force family shelters like, yeah, you get it first for sure.
Yeah, and yeah, we built those. It was working out good.
And then one day the Border Patrol showed up or a company that was subcontracted by them and demolished them all using skiploaders and bulldozers and such. We showed up the following day we rebuilt all the shelters and we're really happy about it.
You know.
It was kind of a big fuck you to them. You can tear down our stuff, but we'll just come back and build more.
Yeah. But then what was it like a three four days later.
Or the next day maybe I'm not the day.
Two days it was close.
Ye, some guys just showed up and they tore it all up with hammers.
They are finishing a tiny little finishing.
Yeah, luckily they didn't really come equipped, like maybe.
With the tools, they didn't really know what they were doing.
Yeah, I think it's fair to say that, but still it's annoying when you've put the time into building it. Right, and Border Patrol didn't destroy contractors didn't destroy the shelters. First, we were like, oh, maybe they're not using this, but there are one hundred and forty people there right now, like in the shelters that got rebuilt for a third time.
So like, I guess even we do appreciate people donating, and we understand that people's resources are scarce, and like the economy is bad and the rent is too damn high, et cetera. But like every time we build up enough stuff, we have to like we're always running uphill because like stuff just gets destroyed either by the weather or by the Border patrol or by volunteer Border Patrol judge, Like
we could, I guess desperately need your help. And like at some point the news cycle will move on from the border, and that doesn't mean that we will be able to move on from having people to help here, right, because, like John said, there were people and people always deserve to be treated with dignity. Is there anything else that you guys think that people should know about the situation? Here? We wrap ups kind of chill. It is really nice.
I like being here. Come here because it makes me happy, and my friends are here.
Yeah, And like the Slider's location is located in a really awesome like you can see down just past the border wall. There's like a nice little train track that used to go from us into Mexico, I guess, and just beyond that there's like sheep on a farm in the distance, like rolling hills, the clouds come through, and like say, it's a really beautiful place to be and to hang out. And a lot of the locals that don't hate what we're doing are very nice.
The people at the hotel are very supportive.
And yeah, we're a great group, really good people. It's always really fun to do anything like this. People are generally enamored by our project and want to be involved and come back a second time. I mean we're kind of like cowboys. I mean we're doing this all on our own. We're driving up and down looking at the sites looking around and all that whole responsibility is on our shoulders.
Yeah, it feels good to take responsibility.
It definitely does.
We're doing this.
It's like no one else will, so yeah, just do it.
Like that's fine. It's very like it reminds me of the punk scene growing up, but like it's a big important thing. Get Like you said, Fox, every national news network has been down here, every drifting streamer has been down here. But the end of the day, it's a few dozen random people who are actually the ones making sure that people don't die here. For all the government attention and for all the millions of dollars spent, it's just us.
Yeah, working on a fraction of the butt.
I mean, it costs them more to fly a helicopter for a few hours than we've ever spent.
In our entire GOFUNDB. Yeah, and yeah, like we get it done. We're very efficient, I guess in that sense. But yeah, we would love more people. People have come because I listen to podcasts and that also like just for me personally means the world to me. Like most of the time we just talk into a microphone and then you can't really see who you're talking to us unless you go on like social media, and that's not
always the best reflection of humanity. So like, it really means the world to me that someone like listens to this when they're driving to work or you know, going on a jog or whatever I'm doing, and it's like, no, I will I will go and I will help, because I think that is how we solve so many of our problems. Like there is a massive problem with people not being able to afford rent living on the street in this country, and we solve it in the same way by just showing up for each other.
And there's also different ways to get plugged in, like if the desert's not your thing, it doesn't I mean, this is like where the process starts as far as like the spectrum of the whole border crisis or not crisis, but the whole border humanitarian situation.
We have going on here. So this is what we're doing out here. But there's also airport runs.
A lot of them get ditched in the airports, so I think we all we got SD and maybe m death.
And at last center kind of hold down.
They do airport runs, border patrol just I guess at night they don't drop them off like after ten or something. They don't drop them off at the IRIS station. They'll just drop them straight off at the airport. So they need help being fed. A lot of them don't have plane tickets. They need to kind of some you know, people need blankets because they have to sleep there. So we all, I mean we all we got is great for that. You can plug in with them, and I
think Alochlado and who else is it? M Deef as well, that's doing the Irish street releases. So when the Border Patrol just releases them on the street, like a lot of people just getting a cab and go. They have the resources they can do that, they're already planned. But some people don't have any money or they got robbed on the way here, so they have nothing. They need a lot of help. They need to figure out where
to go, they need a place to stay. So there's the street releases, there's the airport, there's I think that's kind of.
Or or by just helping with shelters and organizations in whatever city you happen to be living in. You know, the majority of the migro well not the majority, but a very typical answer migrants give me when I ask them where in the United States they're going to? Is New York City or Chicago or any of these major cities.
Yeah, Lincoln, Nebraska. Yeah, it's gonna be Idaho, have fun.
Yeah, it was beautiful.
It was a guy have on and I met from a minority ethnic group in Russia. We met in September, Like I remember one of those first really cold nights, and I was talking to this person and they were in Pennsylvania and I checked in with them a few weeks ago and they're like happily living in Pennsylvania. Can't understand a word anyone else is saying. It's nice to see and yeah, you can help those people, lily in
whatever community you're in. And like, if you're further along the border, there's Aarha Samaritans, there's no massive worth days, there's humane borders, two Songsamaritans as well. Right, yeah, all along the border, you know there are the there are lots of good people in Texas, right, there's a sidewalk school and Blainoso Matamoros, the people at the National Butterfly Center who are very nice people who we've heard from before. Like all along the border and like all around this country.
There are there are things you can do to help, and I want to reinforce it. It's not like this penurius thing we do that's miserable and we all get together and cry every night. Like we do have a nice time, even though we have seen some really stressful things. Like we all look after one another and held space when people do need help or extra time to process something.
But it's a very supportive community and we support each other through lots of other things, like aside from this, and I think a lot of people in general in the twenty first century America struggle with isolation. And that's a thing that capitalism does to people, right, it isolates us from each other. And so hopefully, like I think this is a solution for me this this has been a really positive thing, but like generally my sense of hope and.
Yeah, and like what we're doing this kind of does it's disaster humanitarian relief effort.
It's kind of with the.
Way the climate is going in the world in climate climate are going to.
Get less common.
Yeah, this will just be getting more common, and like this kind of like preparing and building community and like this disaster scenario is going to Yeah, definitely be more in commons.
And it's not that easy to do. I mean, it's not that hard to do.
You know, you just got to have the intention and then you just got to get together and that's all. That's all you really need to do.
Don't think that it's like this. If someone had said to us, what plus or minus fifty thousand people probably have come through, I have no idea on the numbers, but somewhere around.
There, yeah, probably more than that.
Yeah, if we like I remember in May when we cleaned up the first o ads when we were like when I first met your mum and dad, John, we were cleaning up the first o ads and we were like, Wow, that was a horrible thing that happened. That was really fucked. If someone had said, right, well, between now and next March, fifty thousand people will come through here and it's mostly going to be you guys who are here picking up trash,
and that's that's all. It's going to be. Like it's on you, it would have been it would have seemed overwhelming, right, But I don't think people should feel afraid to confront these big problems because like, between the group of people who we've assembled here we've been able to confront this problem and make it survivable and treat people with dignity and bring some dignity and humanity into a situation where there wasn't any right.
No, yeah, And there's a role for everybody.
No matter what you do, you can find your niche of what know you makes you feel good or something that you're good at, you know. Yeah, it's finding the little fascists that destroyed our things online and doing all that online footwork, or it's building shelters, or it's making PB and j's or.
Our friends made a website and made a really good website.
Website, yeah, or even yeah, just being someone that speaks multiple languages is a huge need out here, especially I mean Spanish is pretty common, but the harder languages, like I mean Mandarin.
Yeah. Yeah, if you speak Mandarin and then you reach out to us and when we can call you, then that would be huge.
Right.
That can be really in a medical emergency, that could be a life or death thing. So there were there are a ton of ways to help and re encourage people to kind of go off to they can where can people follow along with you? Two? Do you have like social media or anything that you want to plug.
I don't. I'm gonna keep minding.
The world beautiful.
Yeah.
One of the how I got involved in this is through members of a drum line that I am part of, So we show up for protests, have been since twenty twenty.
Direct Action drum Line on Instagram.
We post a lot of different stuff from organizing for Palestine to you know, we were doing a lot of Black Lives Matter stuff early in twenty twenty and now it's you know, kind of cross mixed with border raide since I've been out here. So we occasionally will make posts so you.
Can follow along there.
Alo Gelato is a good one to follow on social media. Income Paul Wellness on Instagram Borderlands Relief Collective. I'm sure a lot of the people listening already follow a lot.
Of these people.
But yeah, there's a network through all of that, and so once you start following one or the other, we all tag each other and we share each other's stuff, so you can get involved that way and figure out what's going on. Yeah, and the is it bored? What's the website for? That's a great resource.
Border Rade don't get helped to IO. I think if you give it a Google somewhere somewhere around that you'll find it. It's a good website. And like if you face seen similar issues in your community, wherever you are, whatever it is, Like, we've definitely made a lot of mistakes and we've learned a lot, and so we've tried to document the things that we've learned so that you
guys don't have to reinvent the wheel somewhere else. Right, Like you know, you can be an efficient PB and jamaker, just like us.
Learn Suirly's technique.
All right, thank you so much, guys. I really appreciate your time.
Question, Thank you, jeers.
Welcome to It could happen here, the show about how a small group of people are trying to keep making bad things happen, and we're going to tell you what they are. I'm Garrison Davis and joined with me is doctor James Stout. Hello, doctor, Hi Garrison. Thank you for having me fitted some respect on my name.
Appreciate it.
So today we're going to be talking about something called Agenda forty seven, and actually we're going to be talking about this this whole week. We've gotten a lot of quests to talk about the heritage Foundation's Project twenty twenty five, which is a kind of an a road map for how a Republican president could change the country if they get elected next year. And although this proposal is scary
and quite big, it's a massive, massive book. Yeah, Trump certainly listens to these types of guys, but he doesn't always like really like them.
Oa.
He does what the fuck he wants. And again, no one controlling Trump.
He kind of does whatever he wants, right, Yeah, And I mean there certainly are other people like in Congress, including the Speaker, who are definitely pushing this Project twenty twenty five. And I think we'll probably talk about this
on the show at some other point. But Trump actually has his own plans for if he's gonna be elected president again, and we're gonna be talking about that, and that is called Agenda forty seven, which I believe is a subtle reference to the forty seventh president, which will be him if he gets elected.
Yeah, also the forty fifth president. So yeah, sell more merch that way.
So the next the next next few episodes, we're gonna be diving into Trump's plans for if he becomes the forty seventh president of the United States called Agenda forty seven.
He has all of these listed on his website, and one of my favorite parts is that to accompany each one of these, like policy proposals, he has a video of him like reading out something on a like a teleprompter, and he very often will go off script, just completely and just start talking, which which they include the entire transcript for underneath each video, which is just fascinating to read,
totally divorced of like how he talks. It's just amazing. Also, all of the videos are embedded on his website via Rumble, which is just amazing, an amazing stuff happening.
It's perfect.
So that that's that's kind of the uh, the overview of what we're gonna be doing this next week and why and the reason why I have James here. James you you you work in education, right I do?
I do some educating.
Yeah, so you have you have opinions on education, I would assume.
Yeah strong ones as a doctor, yeah yeah, a doctor of mond European history. Just to be clear before anyone, yes, pictures of their illnesses, please don't.
So, I'm gonna be talking about Trump's plan for education, and by the end we can see if it gets the James Stout approval. As someone who works in education.
Yeah yeah, I mean, I'm up in minded. Let's see what he's got.
So Trump, Now, the problem with us doing these episodes is that all of these are like videos right for his policy proposals. And I don't want to subject to you, the listener, to just videos of Trump talking.
I don't.
You don't need to hear that. But there's a part of me, just deep down, a shameful part of that when I'm reading these quotes, I really want to like slip into like a like a bad transgender Trump impression, which I've tried to suppress. I've tried to suppress the surge, but every once in a while, it just it just sneaks out. So as I'm going through these quotes, I cannot promise that that certain things might start happening. And it's just it's just a part of the deal.
You've been possessed by the spirit of Donald Trump.
Oh God. So on this note, Trump opens his education proposal with this line quote, our public schools have been taken over by the radical left maniacs, which really sets a tone for the rest of what we're gonna be talking about today.
I do want a highlight that I've been trying for more than a decade, But obviously it's about people have been more successful than me in that regard.
So over these next like twenty five minutes, I'm gonna try to explain what he calls his quote plan to save American education and give power back to American parents and the American parents line is going to be a
reoccurring trend here. So in kind of a broad overview, Trump believes that regular public schools, as well as colleges and universities are just so far gone to not only require like massive, massive regressive changes, but also frankly whole new alternatives are needed, which leads us to our first policy proposal. So Trump says that Americans are horrified that quote once respected universities express support for the savages and
jihattists who attacked Israel unquote. So that's obviously not great there. It is savages, very very quick, just immediate, immediately getting this sort of stuff. Despite spending more money on higher education than any other country, schools are quote turning our students into communists and terrorists and sympathize of many many different dimensions. What does that even mean. They're sympathizing with the alternate dimensions, you know, the oh I see the
near universe version. They're gaining too much sympathy. Yeah, as well as turning into communists and terrorists.
To be fair, he is right that like one of the areas where you will find like the the few whole. No, actually Twitter is the other area, unreconstructed Marxist leninists.
He's in the Academy that it's there and on x dot com formerly known as Twitter. So to combat this communist and savage and g hottest incursion into universities, Trump is proposing something quote unquote dramatically different. His plan is to seize quote billions and billions unquote of dollars through taxes, finds in lawsuits against quote excessively large private university endowments unquote, and use that money to quote endow a new institution called the American Academy unquote.
That's already the American Academy's already. But is he spending it with an E or or it's why? Like no, it's why, Okay, So it's a place not like the institution.
So the American Academy will seek to quote make a truly world class education avaiable to every American free of charge, without adding a single dime to the federal debt. And then to do this, quote, the institution will gather an entire universe of the highest quality educational content unquote. And I love the phrase educational content.
Yeah, this is this sounds like the short prayer you videos that.
Yeah, what are you like? You're starting to You're starting to suspect certain things, right like, Yeah, what do you think the American Academy is going to be here? Based on the limited information you have?
Yeah, it doesn't seem like a credible university, does it. It seems to look like if you're.
World made, that's education.
Maybe it's what Barry Weiss is doing in Texas, you know, maybe she's gonna be helming the American Academy. It sounds like Jordan Peterston's Grift University.
It's a world class education after you gather an entire universe of the highest quality educational content. So this content, Trump claims will quote cover the full spectrum of human knowledge and skills and make that material available to every American citizen online for free. Unquote that's just a library. Where he's describing as a library, we already have those,
not quite the content. It's not just a library because quote the Academy will utilize the latest breakthrough in computing unquote, as well as study groups, mentors, and industry partners to provide a truly quote top tier education option for the people. For the next part, I have to do it in the Trump voice, because otherwise the grammar won't make any sense.
Whether you want lectures or an ancient history, or an introduction to financial accounting or a trading at a skilled trade, the goal will be to deliver it and get it done properly. I love the phrase whether you want lectures or an ancient history?
Yeah, yeah, Like you can give yourself a history, like you could go back to Samaria and it'sert yourself.
Whether you want lectures or an ancient history, or an introduction to financial accounting or training in a skilled trade. So you will be able to learn all of this online for free, getting a truly topp tier education, which sounds like okay, But Trump specified that your American Academy education will be quote unquote strictly non political unquote.
Good.
I'm really excited to learn an ancient history from a strictly non political standpoint. That's that's great.
We can't discuss the formation of the state because there will be a political stance.
Furthermore, Donald Trump promised that at American Academy quote, there will be no wokeness or jihadism allowed. None of that's going to be allowed.
How will I teach without jihadism? My personal jahad is is to educate the youth of America, But now I can't by taking it.
Sorry, not allowed, not allowed, going to Trump, very sad, very sad. So this plan also seeks to help the forty million Americans who have some college education but no complete degree, by granting credit for past course work at quote unquote legacy institutions and giving Americans quote the chance to complete your education at the American Academy for free and much more quickly than is now possible or available unquote.
So now, if there weren't red flags going off already, there certainly should be now with that last line, more quickly that is now possible or available, which is which is a classic tell of an online university scam. Now, the exact details of how the American academy is supposed to work. Are kind of unclear, probably because it hasn't been figured out yet because it's bush and quite possibly never will get figured out.
Yeah, many such cases and Agenda forty seven as it turns out.
But Trump University founder Donald Trump did say that his American Academy proposal does plan to quote compete directly with existing and very costly four year university systems by granting students degree credentials that the US government and all federal contractors will henceforth recognize.
The other, recognize them as fucking useless.
Not degrees. Degree credentials. Yeah, degree credentials.
Gonna put my degree credential up on my wall.
This is just another Trump University, an uncredited scale that Trump is hoping to prop up with the federal government, this time instead of his business empire. It's it's not it's it's not his entire thing, isn't it, Like, yes, that is the whole thing. It's not real. It's not real.
He's he's framing this plan as a quote unquote revolution in higher education that will provide life changing opportunities by awarding American citizens with quote the full and complete equilovent of a bachelor's degree.
I love it when he just fucking sends it on there's gonna be one in my in my episode, which you're here later this week, when he just cannot say the word film, and I love that he doesn't fucking try. He just he just owns it.
The full and complete equivalent. That's not neither. That's neither full nor complete if it's an equivalent anyway. Trump Trump ends this video with an eloquent quote, enjoy it, learn from it, and thank you, which is just.
I'm going to finish you on my legsures that way, and then I'll do like a smoke puff and just disappear.
So yeah, this is this is the first plan to save American education. That sounds great. I cannot wait to get a fully complete equivalent the bachelor's degree credential. Very very cool.
Yeah, wonderful stuff.
But do you know what isn't a scam?
James?
Can we say that, like I we might be absolute sure.
I trust my life on every single product and or service that follows this musical sting we are back. Do not, I repeat, do not send me any of the advertisers that just aired. I don't care what they are. My life is indebted. I don't care. I don't care.
You can send them to you can send them to Sophie. Her Twitter is at I right, okay.
I write, okay, Senator Sophie.
All right.
So while this Trump University, too will remain uncredited. Donald Trump, creator of the Donald Trump board game that did not sell very well in nineteen eighty what, yeah, didn't you? Yeah, creator of the Donald Trump board game.
Yeah? Wow, okay, is it like monopoly? But you just look lie and generate.
I didn't.
I didn't look too far into it for the bit. I'm gonna be honest here.
This is yah. Disappointed. I was ready to go to deep dive.
But Donald Trump also plans to attack the current accreditation system for being run by a communist scourge, which leads us to our second Agenda forty seven, topic titled quote protecting students from the radical Left and Marxist maniacs infecting educational institutions. But I believe he's talking about you, James.
Yeah, which is ironic. I'm an akiss, not a Marxist.
You're not an artist maniac?
No, No, sadly, not many such cases, but I do make them read the Communist Manifesto in my one oh one class.
It's okay, it's okay.
You got to read it. You got to it. It's something you should emerge from history education having read.
So, Trump starts for talking about how quote unquote academics are quote obsessed with indoctrinating America's youth at colleges and universities while charging a ballooning tuition fee. Trump claims to have a quote unquote secret weapon that he will use to quote reclaim our once great educational institutions from the radical left, the college accreditation system. It's called accreditation for a reason. It's called accreditation for a reason. He never
extravolates on that. I genuinely don't. I can't fathom what I think he means. That could go in so many directions. There's no way to know. There's no way to know.
It just leaves a hanging.
So Trump explains that quote accreditors are supposed to ensure that schools are not ripping off students and taxpayers, but they have failed totally unquote, which is not really what college accreditors do. Both government run and private accreditation organizations exist to develop criteria and CONDUCTI valuations to ensure educational quality and authorize if a school qualifies for student aid programs from the Department of Education. That's generally what accreditation
institutions do. They don't look out for if students are being ripped off, like that's not really their role, but whatever. So upon returning to sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC, Donald Trump promised that he will quote fire the radical left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist maniacs and lunatics. So he believes that there's like communists that are running the accreditation system and that's
what's currently ruining colleges. That is his belief.
They come in, they sit at the back, and this is the right. The little book has to be read, and then we have a criticism circle afterwards where they check how many marked references you've made in your lecture.
So after sending all these communists to the goolag, Trump will then begin to quote accept applications for newer creditors. Now it's unclear if he's talking about just like the public or private sector here, but these newer creditors will quote impose real standards and colleges once again, and once and for all. Now what such standards you ask? Thank you?
James Wells. Trump gave us a handy little list which includes, like some of the more average conservative to libertarian esque positions like protecting free speech, eliminating wasteful administrative positions that drive up costs, offering options for accelerated and low cost degrees, providing meaningful job placement and career services, and implementing college entrants and exit exams to prove that students are actually learning or getting their money's worth, right, Which all that
sounds like kind of standard politician talk, right, It's like, okay, sure, but Trumpe did mention a few other standards that will be imposed once again by this new generation of accreditors, which will also include quote defending the American tradition and Western civilization and removing all Marxist diversity, equity and inclusion
be a regrets unquote. So i dei the right's new favorite boogieyman that's responsible from everything from rising university costs to botched surgeries, aviation incidents, and boat's malfunctioning in cladding
with bridges. It is it is the villain of the of the conservative right at the moment, and so because this has been a trending topic among conservatives, Trump's trying to jump on this DEI train, which sounds incredibly dangerous from their perspective because this term he probably never even heard of before, like a year ago.
Like, come on, no, I don't think he. I don't think he implemented DII in his business institutions. I think this is. Yeah, it's a word they say when they can't say slurs. They think they've found a funny workaround to saying slurs.
I mean, that's this thing with like every time someone says like like critical race theory, woke or DEI, they're really just trying to say a slur. And if and if, if you replace those three terms with just a slur, their sentences make a lot more sense because the way they use the word woke does not mean anything in a lot of cases. But if you just replace it for a racial slur, you're like, oh, now I can
understand what they're saying. It's it's it's a handy trick that really is not fun to think about.
Yeah, or subtle.
As a part of this DEI frenzy. Trump has promised to quote direct the Department of Education to pursue federal civil rights cases against the schools they continue to engage in racial discrimination unquote, which also kind of calls upon like older, like affirmative action complaints that conservatives have been talking about for years.
Now, That's what I wanted he was going after.
Yeah, it kind of it ties into that as well. And and Trump added that this race based discrimination quote includes discrimination against Asian Americans unquote, which is definitely invoking that style of affirmative action conservative rhetoric from like, yeah, ten, five years ago.
Yeah, even more recent, when was that Supreme Court case? Oh yeah, that was that was that was just like last year Becky with the bad grades. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
So beyond just threatening to sick the DOJ on woke schools, Trump also made the more specific promise that if schools quote persist in explicit unlawful discrimination under the guise of equity unquote, he will not only make sure that their endowments be taxed, but also quote, through budget reconciliation, I will advance to measure to have them find up to the entire amount of their endowment. Quote.
Did he realize that, no, no schools have endowments, Like I teach you the community college, We ain't got an endowment.
No, he's I'm sure that he's gonna go after like the Harvard endowment. Yeah, that's gonna track. Yeah, I have fun finding fifty billion dollars from Harvard. That's totally gonna happen. But his plan after he seizes these endowments quote, a portion of the seized funds will then be used as restitution for victims of these illegal and unjust policies, policies
that hurt our country so badly. Colleges have gotten hundreds of billions of dollars from hard working taxpayers, and now we're gonna get this anti American insanity out of our institutions once and for all. So that's cool, Like, okay, sure, you're gonna use this to pay back white people who've been if we've been denied college admission. Okay, cool, that sounds like a winning electoral strategy.
You have finally the reparations people.
Yeah, exactly, exactly. You know who's had it too hard for too long?
Chance it's white people who didn't make it through college garrets.
Uh, it's it's because they didn't get it's because they didn't go to Yale. Now they have to go to Princeton.
Yeah, embarrassing, right, why would you even bother?
So it's but it's not just colleges. Trump also threatened to quote cut federal funding for any school or program publishing critical race theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content onto our children. We're not going to allow it to happen, folks.
Very cool, Great, Yeah, I used to teach a gender sociology course forward to defund defund. Yeah, yeah, I know we're going down fight together. We're gonna do that shit. They will have to fight that way in don't say that on air.
You can't say that you're gonna turn your community college into a you can't say that. So, yeah, he's gonna go after school, regular schools, both colleges, universities, regular schools. If there's doing any any CRT gender ideology, you can tell that some of this was written like a year and a half ago, because no, no one's talking about critical race theory anymore.
But yeah, yeah he missed it. But like, can you imagine teaching a sociology course and just being like, yeah, we're gonna skip past race and gender.
Oh so politics past politics.
Yeah, this is a man who himself went to Like, did he go to Harvard or Yale?
No, he did not go to either. He was sent to a military school by his father when he was thirteen for being annoying. Then he think he went to a school in Pennsylvania, respect And then what other school did he go to?
Critical respect to his dad?
He yeah, he went to the New York Military Academy. That he went to Fordham University and then the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.
Oh yeah, Wharton Business School. Yeah, not a real graduate degree.
So the reason why this is also evils because Trump thinks that a lot of this stuff is basically forming a new religion. All this woke stuff. Quote, the Marxism being preached in our schools is totally hostile to Judeo Christian teachings, and in many ways it resemblesablishing a new religion. Can let that happen. I can't let that happen.
One thing we take a big swing at is Judeo Christian institutions.
To combat this growing threat of religious Marxism.
His administration, I'm sorry, I can't, I cannot wrote.
Oh, his administration will quote aggressively pursue potential violations of the establishment clause and the free exercise clause of the Constitution. That's very simple.
I think you quite understand before we met of that that luckily we do Russian Orthodox Marxism at my university, so we should say, god, yeah, well a lot of beards.
So and then, in kind of like a laundry list of policies and talking points, Trump pledged to quote veto the sinister effort to weaponize civics education, we will keep men out of women's sports and will create a new credentialing body that'll be the gold standard anywhere in the world to certified teachers who embrace patriotic values, support a way of life, and understand that their job is not to indoctrinate children, but very simply to educate them.
No one's ever done. No one has ever created a credentialing body for patriotic teachers who embrace quote our way of life before, it's never been done.
Their efforts to weaponize civics.
Yeah, just imagine him looking for the Civics bill.
Yeah, very funny, So probably distract him for a while.
Stuff, I'm doing some actual terrible shit.
A little bit with that last part was like indoctrinating children, And this next little bit will kind of demonstrate how stuff like QAnon didn't simply go away like some have postulated. Instead, it's just been absorbed into the fabric of American politics. No longer does the boogeyman have to be a DNC
pedophilic elite. Now it's been territorialized and destroyed and mutated into just being any school teacher and or like every trans person right or God forbid a transgender school, which is like the prime evil of the current conservative society. And Trump promises on day one of his new presidency he will quote begin to find and remove the radicals, zealots, and Marxists who have infiltrated the Department of Education, and
that also includes others. And you know who you are, because we are not going to allow anyone to hurt
our children. You are, you know who you are. So this is the weaponization of nearly eight years of QAnon rhetoric, right, that is, that has grown past the ney to actually invoke q and on plus the two years of the Republican Party, The Daily wire and limbs of TikTok working to shift q Andon's kind of disgrace and unfocused momentum towards a manufactured continuation in the form of this transgender groomer craze that's taking over American schools. Quote Joe Biden
has given these lunatics unchecked power. I will have them fired and escorted from the building, and I will tell Kung any appropriations bill I sign must reaffirm the president's ability to remove defined employees from the job. It's all about our children.
Ute just imagining an executive order to remove someone from their lecture.
I am going to be signing an executive order on this podcast. To go to another ad break, we are back and thank you James Berg for reaffirming my ability to remove defiant ads.
Yeah, well, why you were all away that several federal agents came in and in certain an ad break.
In this last section here, we're going to return to Trump's conception that entire alternatives are needed to America's broken, woke school system, now focusing on the grade school side rather than just the post secondary. So in this vein, Trump is courting the growing now number of homeschooling families, though, according to a Washington Post poll from last year, Republican homeschoolers outnumbered Democrat ones two to one, so he kind of already has the majority of that vote, but still
something he is going after. According to Trump, ever since quote the China virus, America has seen an estimated thirty percent increase in homeschool enrollment unquote. It's just a funny term as homeschool in roll. Yeah, yeah, just going to the homeschool to enroll. I'm going to be enrolling at homeschool. Very funny an if elective president for a second time, he will do everything to support quote parents who make
the courageous choice of homes school unquote. Again, the way he uses home the word homeschool is unlike anyone else has ever heard.
Talk.
It is a very odd use of the English language.
Yeah, he doesn't seem to understand parts of speech like no, just what won no.
And Trump said he'll work to ensure that homeschoolers will be entitled to all the benefits available to non homeschool students, able to participate in athletic programs, clubs, after school activities, educational trips, and more. He pledged that in his next term, he will allow five to nine education savings accounts to
be used for quote costs associated with homeschool education. A current five to nine savings accounts allow families to withdraw up to ten thousand dollars a year to spend tax free on tuition for private schools, which Trump called a quote tremendous win for his school choice, very important school choice. To remember that term unquote, that term never comes up
again in this video. Great, So Trump is pledging to expand this tuition savings program to include homeschooling families as well, with a very unknown system of checks and balances to determine what exactly qualifies as costs related to homeschooling. And often homeschooling is used by abusive parents to just have kids do free labor around the house, and they try
to make it count as like education. And like if you're now allowing parents to put money to a savings account to remove ten thousand a year tax free spent on education, like what does what does that mean? Does that mean just curriculum? Does that mean like household supplies? Because that's being put towards their homeschool because they're schooling
at home. Like very very unclear, and it's kind of refers back to some of the general problems homeschooling, especially in like conservative homeschooling or just as a large way to abuse children, not in like the groomer way that right wing people talk about. It's like, no, you're just literally like limiting your kids' access to the outside world because you think if they go outside they're going to
turn gay. So but even if oh sorry, there's there's one one final quote from this homeschooling video, which are just fucking phenomenal to every homeschool family. I will be your champion. Do not vote Democrat. They're looking to destroy you. If you don't mind me saying that Joe Biden can't put two sentences together and yet he's looking to destroy you. Do not vote Democrats. Do not vote for crooked Joe.
Vote for honest Donald, Thank you very much. It's funny because in the video when he says vote for honest Donald, he also starts to crack up because he knows how ridiculousness is.
God.
Do not vote for crooked Joe, Vote for honest Dundald, thank you very much, very very cool, looking to destroy you. If you don't mind be saying.
Yeah, if you don't mind me a man who rarely asks permission to say the most extame shit.
So, even if parents are not choosing to homeschool, Trump wants to let voters know that he will fight for parents' rights. Which isn't quite a dog whistle, but it does refer to a very specific style of patriarchal rhetoric popularized by hyper religious conservative think tanks. I propose an extremely narrow version of how the American family should operate within society.
More on this later. But so, what can Trump do to let right wing religious parents know that he will be their champion even in like blue states or big cities. As much as Trump might want to be a dictator, he doesn't have unlimited power to impose his war on wokeness in liberal cities. But Donald Trump, who was impeached for trying to blackmail the president of Ukraine in summer
of twenty nineteen, does have a plan. He wants to quote implement massive funding preferences and favorable treatment unquote for states and school districts that make four specific quote historic reforms and education that Trump has decreed. These four specific reforms include abolishing tenure for K through twelve teachers so that we can quote remove bad teachers and adopt merit
pay to reward good teachers. The second is to quote drastically cut the blowed number of school administrators, including the costly and divisive and unnecessary deibureaucracy. Third to ad to parental bill of rights that includes complete curriculum transparency in the form of universal school choice, and lastly, quote implement
the direct election of school principles by the parents. Trump calls this last bit the ultimate form of local control, something our country has never had, or at least has not had for the last fifty years. So those are his four reform plans, which is like, yeah, you know
who's had it too easy for too long, teachers. Let's abolish ten year adopt merit pay a disaster of a system, cut administrative roles to put more work on teachers, have parents be able to fire fire principles by voting, and a vote to elect their own principle, and universal school choices is actually more of a dog whistle that it just refers to a series of like very racist, like urban planning policies to direct rich white people's funding into
a very few selected number of schools instead of where they actually like live and instead of the actual district they live in. So there's all of that, and like what Trump keeps coming back to among all these quote unquote reforms, it all kind of relates to complete parental dominance. And part of this was the parental Bill of Rights, which you've probably seen some conservatives talking about more these past few years. And this is another quote from Trump here.
It's all about the parents for their children more than anyone else. Parents know what their children need. And if you haven't heard of a parental bill of rights directly, you most certainly have heard of one by another name that don't say gay bill, that was a parental rights bill, a sensibly targeting education, but these bills often end up giving parents just complete control over every aspect of the
child's life. They dictate how children are allowed to express themselves, and allow parents to impose nearly any discipline or punishment. They desire total control over what the child eats, what they wear, what they read, what they watch, what they see online, and what they're allowed to learn in school,
who they're allowed to socialize with. Some of these bills that I read through for this also bar mandatory masking policies and schools back when that was the thing, and are often full of anti vax talking points and attempts
to ban sex ed and quote unquote gender politics. As a part of these bills, teachers in school administration are legally required to act as parental surveillance tools to report how a child behaves, how they socialize, how they dress, how they like to be referred to in who they
are friends with. This includes outing children as gay or trands to parents if anyone in the school suspects that the student has a non heterosexual sexual orientation or is acting in any way inconsistent with their assigned gender at birth. These types of bills often have other consequences as well.
In states where some of these bills have passed, like North Carolina, due to legal risks, some elementary schools have been unable to talk about or give out educational materials on consent or how to identify when child sexual abuse is taking place as a part of the Safe Touch programs.
These programs are basically unable to happen because teachers will now be held personally legally liable if any parent objects to this material so parental rights bills have been signed into law in six states over the past two legislative years, famously Florida, as well as Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Iowa, and North Carolina. Since then, similar bills have been introduced in more than twenty five states, many of which have passed
through at least one chamber. Some of them are still in the process of either passing through a second chamber or being signed by the governor. I'm gonna end with two quotes here from Trump that kind of reiterate this parental dominance thing that he's really pushing for. And also people like Ronda Santis have been pushing for Ted Cruz a lot of writing politicians quote as the saying goes, personnel is policy. And at the end of the day, if we have pink haired communists teaching our kids, we
have a major problem. When I'm president, we will put parents back in charge and give them the finals say. We will get back to teaching reading, writing, and math called arithmetic, and we will kill our kids the high quality pro American education they deserve. They're gonna teach you math called arithmetic.
Magnificent, amazing.
We may spend the most. But we're going to be tops in education no matter, no matter where you go anywhere in the world, We're gonna be tops in education.
There will be no bottoms in the American education system going forward.
So this is this is Donald Trump, the second host of the TV show The Apprentice, who's run for public office. This is his plan for education. Doctor James Stout, how do you feel about about these education reform proposals.
Yeah, it doesn't. It doesn't seem like a weird idea, if I'm being honest, Having having listened to it, I think perhaps he hasn't got the sharpest grasp on what's going on in the education system. The reason we have education is because your parents don't necessarily know what's best for you, right, Like your.
Parents can't be an expert in everything.
Yes, so some of us go and get PhDs so we can, and then we teach your people how the important things about that like you, by definition, your parents cannot fulfill all the roles in an education system fulfills and.
Like unlike pink haired communists who have complete who have complete total control over every aspect of what a child should learn.
It's one of the things when you enter the university, you know, like they did a tuberculosis test and then they pass you a pink hair dye and I mean you get a nose piercing as well.
A lot of this is very much reminiscent of like the the fears of like communist education that you see in like the nineteen thirties. How there's a lot of political a lot of political tension trying to be raised over the fear that there's communists teaching you in universities and schools.
Yeah, it's interesting because at the same time.
Like Frankfurt school style stuff.
Yeah, yeah, I've written a lot about like anarchist ideals, educational ideals rights at the same time, they were anarchists in Spain being like, you know, we should do we should do all our classes in the forest. Let's just
go out into the forest. Or absolutely there was a school by the sea where they talked kids like they were just having this incredible utopian education dream, which in many ways we still haven't adapted to some of the things that that really could offer, and instead, yeah, we're having this McCarthyism Part two.
Well, great, that is Trump's plan for education. In case, in case you didn't know, so watch out for those pink cared communists. Keep an eye out for any parental bill of rights being proposed in your state. And it is probably has little little to do with actually protecting children and more to do with making parents just complete dominating force and controlling every aspect of their child's life.
And I mean the other sins we're thinking about this, it's like it removes access to for kids to talk about things that they may be upset.
About, and access to mandated reporters, like exactly, a mandated reporter like this seems to exactly it's away from that exactly.
And and I mean the idea that that that schools are going to be legally required to out a child if he's if they're acting like perceived to be deviant in some like gender sexual way. Like all of these things are just ways to enable parental abuse in a variety of like ways that are explicit and non explicit. And it's it's it's it's it's quite it's quite upsetting. And that's the that's the thing that conservatives are are currently trying to push for. This is a big topic.
This stuff was talking about in the Republican primaries that were completely useless, constantly stuff like this is something this is referred to while invoking the sphere of like this pink haired transgender communist teacher, which is currently like the biggest threat to America according to most conservatives.
Yeah, they're taking us down from the inside.
That and jihadism, which are probably linked somehow.
Yeah, yeah, I think, Well it's the pink head jahttiest famous. Well that isn't for us today. What are we going to be learning about next for Agenda forty seven games, Well, we're going to be learning next about immigration. Don Donald Trump's border policies. Many of you will be shocked to
hear that they're not very good. And well, I have two classes this summer if you're if you're in San Diego and you want to get in before they take the Marxism out of the education system, you can but strike now.
I do love how I do love how much of this is. Like do you know who's had it easy for too long? Transgender teachers there?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the people who are so fucking broke they have to have like go fundmes up for their gender reassignment surgery.
Great wonderful stuff. Yeah, all right, we will be back tomorrow to talk about Trump's border policies. Things that will probably be totally normal, totally chill.
Yeah, it's very very similar to fucking Faddy. They are similar to Biden's but that's a whole other just terpy.
That's a whole other discussions. All right, See you are the other side.
Bye, Hello, and welcome back to It could happen here in your daily dose of the horrors that are in fact already happening all around us. I'm your occasional host, Molly Conger, and I am delighted to be joined today by the critically acclaimed author of Culture Warlords, journalist researcher, sword enthusiast, Sandwich expert, and my friend Talia Lavid.
Hello.
Yeah, I once introduced myself at an event as a Sandwich historian, which I think was the pinnacle of my public speaking career. But this is a second pinnacle. Hey, Molly, what's up?
Thank you so much for coming on today to talk with me about your new book, Wild Faith, is coming out in just a few weeks October fifteenth.
Right, Yeah, Wild Faith, How the Christian Right is taking over America. Not the terrible b movie entitled Wild Faith.
Yeah, the SEO is scrambled on that one. But the book, however, is very good. I mean, first of all, I just want to say, like I've been reading the gally copy that you sent me, which I honestly made me feel very fancy. I've never received a galley copy of a book that's not out yet before, so I felt, you know, kind of a kind of a broadcasting professional with my special book.
It's an exclusive club. You're one of like five people thus read it.
Oh my god, that is that's very exclusive.
Yeah, well it's about to become a lot less exclusive, so feel special while you can, right.
But I realized while I was reading it, you know, I have my little sticky tabs because I'm reading a lot more books lately, regrettably not not big time book guy. It's always reading. I read a lot of court documents, but I'm reading a lot of books right now for research for my show, and it's like my little sticky tabs. And as in reading it, I realize I'm not marking passages that I think would be useful for us to
talk about in this interview. I'm just putting my little tabs on passages that just like punched me in the gut, you know.
Ah, sorry for punching you.
No, but I mean, I mean with the way the power of your words, because like a lot of what I'm reading sucks. It's just right, Like I spent all day yesterday reading like twenty five year old Issues of Resistance, which was the quarterly magazine for a white power music label. So this, I mean it's a real departure, So you know, really just reveling in the richness of the pros and the fact that it, you know, didn't want to kill me.
Yeah.
No, I also have experienced neo Nazi research fatigue, and also just like the sort of relentless grimness of flowing through these like fundamentally hostile texts, and also like academic texts, which are difficult in their own way. I try to write accessively or just like excitingly. I find that a lot of especially nonfiction sort of journalism me books tend to be a little dry, and I'm like, let's not
be dry. Let's be like spicy, and you know, like form and function, Like you're more likely to be moved by a message if you find the writing compelling.
You know, it's just you have.
Such a way with words. I mean, you know this, You're a professional writer. I don't want to embarrass you on the show.
So I'm twirling my hair like, yes, but I do write for a living.
If you'll indulge me, if it's legal, if the publisher will allow this. I just want to read this passage from the introduction that I think is a good jumping off point, and it was one of the first things I marked because I was just like, oh, hell yeah, we're getting into this. There's good words in here, okay. The Christian Right is a force in American politics and has been for decades, half a century to be precise,
during which it has steadily gained power. It started in school rooms, continued in court rooms, and perseveres with the aid of people who are perfectly willing to call in bomb threats to hospitals and attempt to overturn elections. It features self proclaimed prophets with a distinct interest in politics, newly minted apostles with very definite ideas about spiritual battle and its earthly components, and pastors eager to usher in
the end of the world. Its adherents have hymns and devotionals and speaking tongues on occasion, and the showiest among them are known to march their cities, blowing Ram's horns in an effort to topple, as Joshua once did, the wicked cities of the world. They have their own insular world, their own media apparatus. They have legislators who could fire in Brimstone's speeches from the badly carpeted rooms where laws
are made. They have lawyers too, And in case the lawyers fail, there's always the promise of congregations that might coalesce into mobs or arsonists whose burning holy zeal coalesces into the tiny pinpoint of a molotop cocktail. And I knew from the intro that we were in for a ride.
Yeah, it's like cast of characters, the worst people ever, but like, let's write about it in an exciting way. I think that one of the themes of the book is really how these extra legal extremist movements like the anti abortion terror movement, and the legal framework of a
movement work together. I actually initially heard about this from a friend who was talking about how, like during the gay rights movement, you had sort of the act up built demonstrations, the diants and then you have the sort of like more respectively coded like gay people who you know, we're talking to the government and trying to get elected and you know, really trying to influence research, and that every movement needs sort of a radical outside and then
a respectable inside. And I'm like, oh, this works in like the acratic movements too, where you have like this you know, fringe that's burning down clinics, and then people steadily working for fifty years to like ban abortion, and they have the same DNA and they have the same goals. They just go about it differently but complement each other.
And I think that's like a running theme in the book, is that like you have lawyers and you have legislators, and then you have mobs and they're sort of all working towards the same goals. And that's really what we're seeing, I think, on the Christian Right after decades of building power.
Yeah, one of the notes that I wrote down in that vein while I was reading was that you know, the Christian Right drives its power across a spectrum, right from the clinic bomber to the senator, but it's not you know, you might say the two sides of the same coin. But to me it looks like this isn't two different spheres of power too sort of separate but coexisting or comorbid ideologies. They're just different numbers on the same dial, right, it's turning up and turning down.
Yeah, it's like the hand that lights the torch and the hand that puts it to the you know, pire. They perform different functions, but they have really the same goals. And if like me, you view stripping half the populace of its bodily autonomy, imposing a theocracy, hounding queer people out of public life, slash into death as fundamentally violent goals, Yeah, I don't think there's like a respectable iteration necessarily. There's just cosplaying respectability and right.
You can say it with a tie on on the Senate floor, but it's it's the same message.
Yeah, And I think so much of our media apparatus and governmental apparatus is really sort of views like again this like four and function, right, Like if you are if you say something politely, it doesn't really matter what you're saying, Like if you say something with a suit on in the register of like you know, in a calm sort of Mike Pencian, Rush Limbaugh and decaf as he called.
Himself a boy, She says.
Did he say that, Yeah, that's what he called himself when he read it, did a like evangelical radio show. Yeah, no, no matter what you say, as long as you are like white and you say it politely, like this is fundamentally sort of fine. And then if you look at it from you know, a step or two back, and you're like, no, actually, no matter how politely say it, this is like a violent, deeply unpopular theocratic agenda that
like fundamentally is incompatible with multiracial democracy. I also think, and I keep running into this, like well meaning liberals being like, but isn't there a separation of church and state? And I'm like, I don't know. Do you fucking think there is a in Alabama? Do you think there is in Arkansas? And all of these you know in Texas, Like all of these figures are like, we're Christians, We're making laws for Jesus, and.
We have covenant marriages and we want you to too.
Yeah, like we're gonna outlaw divorce because of God. And like, you know, women dying of sepsis in hospital parking lots is what Jesus wants and like, and I experienced this, I think you probably have to when you like report on you know, zealots and extremists, and people inevitably wind up like measuring other people's weep by their own bushel. In other words, they're like, they can't really believe this stuff, and it's like, no, they really do. They can't really
have these goals. First of all, they do, but also doesn't matter, right, I mean the question of like impact versus intent. First of all, I think it's perfectly possible to be both a grifter and a true believer at the same time.
That's just synergy.
Yeah.
And also fundamentally, this is a world premis done grievance, where it's this idea that like the world has got one oh, we're on you. And so in a sense, grift is just like, well, you know, the world's corrupt and I'm fighting a righteous cause, So what does it matter the ethics that I sort of skip on along the way.
I mean, once you've amped the stakes up to we're fighting the literal devil and everyone who's getting in my way is animated by actual demons from hell. I mean the steaks couldn't be higher, so you do what you have to do.
Exactly, and it's this theory of power. And so then people sort of standing outside of that paradigm who are not keyed into this idea of like we're in an ethical spiritual battle, like and we must create like a kingdom of Christ on earth in America to win against the devil, and then people outside being like, you're hypocrites, and it's like it's not a valid criticism to them because they're like, first of all, you're not like a Christian if you're a liberal, but also like you're not
on our level, like we're fighting Lucifer and you're probably a stand like on his team if you oppose us. So, you know, a multitude of apparent hypocrisies can be excused by the idea that like this is a holy war and in war there's like all kinds of avert behavior.
That's doing holy war crimes.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean this is why, for example, you see a lot of like prominent female figures from Philish Lafley, you know, in the seventies and eighties to like the trad wives now, and it's like, how does this fit in with your overall sort of idea that women should be chaste and submissive and meek and silent. I mean, first of all, tradwife stuff is often fetish.
Spanish content, but yeh, I mean pilish laffy made a living professionally saying that women shouldn't make a living professionally, but that contradiction doesn't matter.
Yeah, I mean I think I call them valkyries for feminine submission in the book.
Yeah, I mean, at the.
End of the day, like if you believe that this is your your calling, your mission, you know, your mission field in the service of the Lord to undo the demonic sort of influence of feminism, Like of course you're going to.
Speak, You've been moved by God to do so.
Yeah, And of course, like female leaders with the evangelical community, like sort of minority Republicans can be like knocked off their pedestal quicker and easier, but like they still can come out and exist and testify and Schlaughley throughout her very long prolific and lucrative career, you know, was like I'm a housewife with six kids, and that was her that was how she defined herself even while being this incredibly prominent figure and one of the sort of key
architects of the current Christian right coalition of like when Catholics, she and Paul Leric and Leonard Leo and some other right wing Catholics brought these Catholic values of being all about abortion to the evangelical right, which prior to the seventies is like, that's a weird Catholic thing.
You don't really care I.
Wanted to talk about that. So I'm not sure how sort of common knowledge this is, but the Protestant Christian community in the United States did not care about abortion until the seventies. It was not an issue in their communities. They were generally pro abortion. They were you know, the Baptists were in favor of Roe V. Wade.
Yeah, the fucking Southern Baptist Convention came out in like seventy four, I think it was, and was like, yeah, we approved of rov Wade.
So it's not like, you know, opposition to abortion is baked into Christianity. It is baked into the American Evangelical Christianity of post nineteen seventy five or so.
Because of this sort of conscious cynical political.
Decision, and that I think is so interesting because you know, you get into this conversation of well, what are their deeply held beliefs and do they really believe it and does that matter? But we can pin down the moment they started believing this and we know why, and it's segregation.
Yeah, I mean, first of all, I would say, like people can still like this is like several generations later of like constant barrages of extremely violent propaganda against abortions.
So right, so the belief is sincere today, but you could look at it where it was born. Yeah, exactly, you should have been aborted, right, Yeah.
No, it definitely should not have been carried to term. But like it's it's crazy.
And in addition, Tomah's book Randall Baumer does some really good coverage of this. So the sort of general arc is like three sort of nineteen seventies, you had this like generally conservative population of Southern Baptists who we're like on board with McCarthyism, hated the godless Reds, but kind of viewed politics as like worldly and not really their
sphere and we're not particularly politically engaged. And then brown versus a board of Education passes immediately the white Christian populist just disinvests these from the public schools, leaving multiple counties in the South without functionally any public education at all. And this mushroom after rain, kind of like patch of patches of parochial schools with church or Christian in the
name start popping up, and they're all white schools. Their segregation academies is the sort of term of art for these, and they're explicitly under a Christian agis they're religious schools.
Their tax exempt as a result.
And then in like the late sixties and seventies, the government was like, you can't be tax exempt and like considered a charitable organization if you are segregated and don't have any black.
Students or minority students.
And that is what woke the sleeping dragon of the Christian right really like, you know, get your filthy government hands off our tax exemptions.
Like they just went, you know nuts.
They were really mobilized, you know, like these are the people who are like growing tomatoes at Ruby Bridges, Like you know, they're really politically motivated for the first time because they're experiencing like a consequence for segregation.
And so this is when like Jerry.
Fowell and Ralph Reid and you know, James Dobson start sort of coming forward and being more prominent. And then by the sort of mid seventies to eighties, you had these like savvy or political operators coming out and saying, hey, guys, segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever. Is like, it's great that it really fired y'all up, but it has sort of a limited appeal.
And they shot George Wallace. It's over.
Yeah, Like there's gonna be a ceiling on that, and a lot of people think you suck. So why don't you get it on the ground on this new civil rights struggle abortion, where you can fight for the unborn who conveniently will never.
Disagree with you, right, their voices don't have to be centered here. We can speak for them.
I mean, they're the most convenient political constituency in history.
Right because they're so innocent and you can't milkshake duck a fetus. He's not even here.
Yeah, he can't talk, but he's not gonna say shit. So I mean that's like the very capsule history. And then of course becomes this idea of like the moral majority and where the Guardians of America's soul and we're gonna get really weird about sex.
Also, it's just.
Like if you strip it all the way down to the studs, Like the core of this is women are bleeding to death in hospital parking lots because Jerry Folwell didn't want to pay his taxes or stop being racist. Yeah, I mean that's not fair.
No, people sometimes like are a little skeptical when I'm like, all of the hatreds are interconnected. But then you look at like concrete historical examples of like this world historical wave of misogyny.
I mean, it's not.
That this population wasn't like weird about sex or weird about women.
Like to start with.
I mean maybe they would have gotten here a different way, but that's how we got here.
Yeah, we got here by just like, no, we will pay taxes on our segregation academies. Bob Jones University's inter racial dating ban is perfectly great, and we're gonna mobilize about it. And so what you have then now is just like fifty years of political lock step because and you see this in like.
Other religious communities, I mean, like I know.
Like it's sort of notorious how much corruption slides by in New York because like the consident communities vote as a block, Like it is very useful to have a congregation that all votes the same way.
It's politically useful.
I mean, what other populations can you get together once a week as a captive audience and speak to with authority if you can mobilize those people. And that's what Jerry Folwell saw, right, is like this is a great way to get a lot of people to vote the way I want them to vote.
Yeah, And you know, the church has always been like a really prominent institution in American civil society, especially as the rest of sort of civil society has fallen away and degraded. Like churches are some of the only social outlets that Americans have. And what's interest when you talk to evangelicals and next evangelicals is just like being a Republican is like part of their religious identity in a major way. It's like this is how you vote, and this is you know, how you dress, and this is
how you go to church and so on. But like the idea of being a democrat is like not only you know, a little bit out of step with your community, it's heretical.
I mean, that's how the demons give in.
Yeah, yeah, demoncrats, I mean, and like, yeah, it's stupid. But it's also like half of the people saying demoncrats, like literally mean democrats are aligned with Lucifer.
And I think that's a point that I don't want to get lost on the listener. This you know, this idea that people literally have demons in them, that demons are active in the world, that demons are motivating the actions of their enemies. It's real for them. And I'm not saying that to be derisive or you know, it's real. It's real. It is an animating factor for a lot of these people. And that's hard to wrap your mind around. I mean, I struggle with the idea that that is
real for them. But like that's how you get things like satanic panic, and we see echoes of satanic panic in this idea of you know, groomers in kids' schools, they really have this fundamental, like foundational belief in this, you know, whether or not they're calling it demons, that the existence of some sort of ontological evil that is
coming for their children. And like, once you arrive at the place where like where you understand that that's real for them, their actions make more sense, like they're not behaving irrationally if you if you truly believe that these things were happening, you'd act crazy too.
Yeah, I mean it's really hard to get people to step outside their own worldviews, and in both directions, right, Like I don't believe that demons are you know, abroad in the world and motivating like every element of political action to someone who.
I'm starting to see them some places, but generally no.
To someone who does my viewpoint is incomprehensible and vice versa. So I think part of I mean not that I'm like one of those people that's like polarization is the big problem, like you know, as opposed to anything with like concrete policy, like you know where it's like the big problem is we all don't like each other enough.
And I'm like, no, the big problem is like people are espousing policies that will cause deaths, and like also that people like believe their political enemies are like literally agents of Satan, I would say, is like a bigger
problem than polarization and the abstract. But yeah, I mean this this doctrine of sort of spiritual warfare, which if you like google it it's just like, oh, this is the mindset, and it's like you the listener to it could happen here, like you've been drafted into the spirit war from like birth.
Congratulations, private, and.
You're probably on the side of the devil, so good job. I mean, I don't know, like a lot of Americans believe in angels and demons, and that's fine, but it's like when that starts impinging on the political sphere in a very serious way, It's like, how far would you go if you believed your opponent was under the thrall of like Satan, you would go pretty damn far's.
I mean, that's why you know clinic bombings were and I guess are on the rise again, right, like these arsins of clinics. It's not like other kinds of crime in my mind, right, it's not a crime of passion
or an interpersonal dispute. It is people who have been motivated by this belief that this is a place where a genocide is happening, that there's a holocaust going on in there, that people are ripping you know, actual living babies limb from limb, and if you really did believe that their actions make sense and that's why it happens so often, right, because these people are motivated by this belief that God commands them to take this action.
Yeah, I mean there's your dual element to that. I mean, first of all, absolutely yes, Like I've read some anti abortion terror manuals speaking of extremely unpleasant research, and it's just really like these people are murderers. It's mass murderers, Like you're like killing Hitler, right.
And wouldn't you wouldn't you kill baby Hitler?
Exactly poetical about baby Hitler and like a countrywide scale and when specific abortion doctors have been mentioned in right wing media, those guys end up dead and that's not a coincidence. So there's that element of it, which is the majority of it.
It's huge.
But there's also this idea of demonic geography, where like demons can possess sort of places like abortion clinics or institutions like Planned parenthood or even the Democratic Party, which you know, I read a lot of demonology books like Taxonomies of Demons. Pigs in the Parlor was this really big hit in like the seventies, and it's been like reissued and reissued and millions of copies and it's just like, on one level, it's really compelling because it's like, are
you tired, are you sad? Are you feeling clumsy? Do you have like persistent stomach aches? It's demons and here's how you deal with that. And like in a country with shitty health care, I can totally see why someone who's like really depressed might go to like an exorcist or a deliverance minister, which is the Protestant.
If you'll try anything, and this guy's going to do it for free.
I watch so many videos of deliverance ministers doing their thing, and it's like freezy. It's like people you know, are just like sitting there and they're like people praying over them and screaming in their face, like and they wind up vomiting and crying and it's all very like intense. And you know, if you think about it from a placebo effect perspective for like one second, you're like, obviously this person would feel a weightlifted from them. They've had
this ecstatic experience. And this isn't the majority of it. This is about fourteen percent of America identifies this as white avengels. So many Protestants, it's still so many people, because people keep asking me, like, how many people really believe shit like this, and I'm like, well, about eighty to ninety percent of like people who identify as white evangel Protestants vows most of these beliefs.
So that's like, that's like thirty million people.
Yeah.
Yeah. And then you add in the Catholic.
Right, which is getting weirder every day.
Yeah.
Jd Vance, I hate women exist to reproduce, breathe you filthy sow. But like, even beyond the adult Catholic convert style weirdness, like right wing Catholics are an integral part of the Christian right, like Amy Cony Barrett, you know, antonin Scalia, that kind of thing. That's another bunch of millions. So this reactionary force has like numerically significant constituency. On the other hand, it definitely punches way above its weight in terms of right.
They have an outsized influence of both you know, on the legislative floor and when it comes to you know, who's racking up the most bodies.
Yeah.
And also even like the culture wars right, like the sort of loudest culture warriors tend to at least come from like a background of I'm speaking for God or Christ is king or whatever it is, Like how many times have you and I encountered that an extremist contacts But also like the sort of more mainstream me.
What the fuck the mainstream is? I don't know, it's full of piss.
But like the more mainstream me, like Christian grifter, right, they come from this. I'm speaking from my faith. These are my religious principles. But like it is with noting again, just to rewind in our conversation, but like the whole concept of religious liberty and religious freedom absolutely was like an ad slogan coined in the seventies around segregation, right.
Religious freedom to do what? I mean, it's like states rights, states rights to do what?
Right?
Yeah, like you answer the question.
Yeah, it's religious freedom to have segregated schools, is the answer to that.
And you still see echoes of that with either still religious schools that can't accept federal grant money because they don't let students be gay, right, Like it's not racial segregation anymore, but they are, you know, refusing to admit gay students, and that is a violation of federal civil rights law.
Yeah, but that's where I mean that's where that slogan started, and then it's blossomed to include basically like a gay person came into my shop, except they didn't, right, I know, there's no standing, right, Like that whole case was built a lie.
Whatever.
That's yeah, it's like and the standing in the Supreme Court is so ridiculous. This, I mean, in many ways, this Supreme Court is the culmination and embodiment and a botheosis of like Christian right theocracy, because you have these like absolutely bat shit religious zealous I mean Amy Cony Barrett is like from a cult, and in this unaccountable body, they're passing unpopular theocratic principles that the majority of the
American public disagrees with. But like specifically what they are trying to enact and what they are what they are enacting is this theogratic agenda, where like the government is in your bedroom, the government is in your doctor's office, like the government is sniffing your panties, and it's it's gross and it's upsetting and fundamentally like theocracies are just very famously all up in your junk, like they're obsessed with like controlling and censoring sexuality of all kinds of
a particularly female sexuality and queer sexuality, like sniff those out. And so that's part of the reason why so many abortion arguments, Like, first of all, you have the like the you're murdering this cluster of cells, which is a full human baby. Like do you remember that article in The Guardian a couple of years ago that like showed the actual size of like fetuses at various stages of development, and it was like you were just like so little, like these little like little fingernails.
Yeah, and it doesn't look like a tiny baby doll.
That's just very small.
Yeah, exactly, it's not like a mini baby like it like tides of gore. It's like literally like a tiny cluster of cells. So the anti abortion propaganda, like you are not immune to propaganda. It has like wormed its way into the popular consciousness just by virtue of its ubiquity and constant repetition being the key to successful propaganda. But so many of these arguments, in addition to this abortion is murder, staff is also just like you should have kept your legs closed.
Right, this is a this is a consequence God did this to you.
Yeah, like sex for your sins immortal sin and sex should be punished, and.
I think must be doing it wrong.
Like, I'm like, why do you want sex to have consequences and be punished? The like intensity of the misogyny around purity culture is so intense.
Ask you, you know, about the experience of writing the book, right, So you know, your first book, Culture Warlords, was traumatizing for you to craft, right, because you had to spend so much time in these digital spaces in some in some cases physical spaces with you know, neo Nazis, four Chan guys, you know, aspiring terrorists, and so that's traumatic to experience, you know, But largely that experience was alone, like at your computer screen, sort of consuming this content
that was eroding your soul. But the second half of this book is about child abuse, right, And like you interviewed people who grew up in this movement about their lives, about their husband's raping them and their parents beating them as children, and like how did those experiences compare? And like what was that?
How?
I mean, how did you prepare to do that? I don't know even know how it would begin to do that with care.
I mean, I think my goal going in is like I'm not going to betray you. Like that was my guiding ethos of just like I view like your trust in me as a sacred thing, not like sacred in any formal religious sense, but just like you know, I view your trust in me as something that I hold very dearly.
It's very important.
I'm going to treat your pain with as much gentleness and respect as I can. And like I interviewed over one hundred people, largely about their experiences with experiencing child abuse in an evangelical milieu, as is laid out with pain steaking instructions, and like all of these parenting manuals. Actually, like I think reading the parenting manuals was even more disturbing than talking to people, because like people were like
this fucked me up and it was wrong. And then these books are like, no, you must beat your toddler because Jesus says so, and like here's exactly how to beat your toddler, and here's what you should use to beat your toddler, and here's the like supremely fucked up,
like weird ritual that we prescribe. And then like reading those in tandem with like like the accounts of people who were like this specific thing like sucked me up for life and really messed up my ability to have like intimacy or self confidence or whatever all of that stuff.
I mean, it was tough.
I definitely took more time. Like I wrote Culture Warlords in nine months, so I was like totally immersed constantly. It just like didn't come up for ayer, yeah at all. And this one I was like, I need a little more time, guys, Like I wrote it over you know,
almost three years. I also pretentiously started calling this philosophy Guarding your Heart because I really got lost in the sauce with Culture Warlords, Like I was in a dark place while I was writing it, and afterwards I was also the like it came out in mid COVID, so that didn't help either. But uh, it was a really really rough experience with this. I was like, I'm going to keep writing. I'm gonna write about sandwiches all the way through. I'm gonna like make sure I have friendships
and stuff that's grounding me. And I think consciously having that at the forefront of my mind really helped.
That.
Being said, like, what was really encouraging was all of these people who had experienced this sort of child abuse industrial complex in the evangelical community, where like we really value that someone wants to hear what we have to say, and also that it's someone from outside the community is like paying attention and thinks this is important, which is not to denigrate like expangelical voices, but more to say that, like, I guess there's a certain validation when someone who's like
not didn't grow up in your corner of religiosity, dark corner.
And sort of bringing it to an outside audience too. I think a lot of expangelicals their audience is largely their fellow expangelicals exactly.
And I'm someone who, like I grew up as a Jew, and I'm like, yeah, this sucked. This is terrible.
I'm like appalled reading like to Train Up a Child by The Pearls or The Strong Willed Child by jam Stobson, which, like to be clear, the strong willed child is a bad thing.
It's a bad thing to have a child with us.
You have to beat it out of them, sure, literally, And I'm ring into this in the wild recently. I don't know if you have come across this guy online. Do you know the nineties movie The Little Rascals.
Oh my god, alf from The Little Rascals turns out to be able Salfa.
The guy who played Alfalfa's name is Bug Hall.
He like, really like I don't got into a sort of main character situation over some posts about how he beats his infants. He beats infants because that's I guess, a good way to raise a baby.
Yeah. Also I think he's homeless.
No, he's a surf.
Oh he's a voluntary serfdom arrangement.
Oh my god. Okay, well he sounds like a big rascal. Yeah, he's continued that trajectory of Rascal theom But don't be your kids.
I mean, I will also say the.
Reason why this book focuses so much on child abuse, which, like I encountered some haters and losers and doubters along the way who were like, why are you focused so much on child abuse? And I was like, there are a lot of different theories about like how authoritarianism develops, but one of the big ones is focusing on the
pedagogy in authoritarian societies. The societies that become authoritarian, you know, evolve from democracy to authoritarianism and beating the shit out of people from when they're in infancy, and particularly when they display disobedience or ask why, or you know, just deviate from expectations.
It's a great way to make an obedient brown shirt.
Yeah, exactly, Like this is a recipe for future authoritarians. Like the people I spoke to had sort of broken away largely from this culture, but many of the sort of most obedient soldiers in the armies, Army of God like are that way. Because again, I can't overemphasize how much these parenting manuals, which spanned from like nineteen seventy to twenty fifteen, these texts, you know, the dates that
they were published, emphasize having an obedient child. What you want is not like a child who's kind or curious or thoughtful or smart. It's obedient, instantly obedient. Don't make me count to three is the title of one of the books. And like, what you're creating is a culture of people who a like empathize with the aggressor at all times. So hence this admiration for strength and even
admiration for cruelty. People who are trained to obey and obey without question, and people who are very acclimated to the use of violence.
I mean, you're doing fascism in the home right.
So the the author, like Alice Miller, the the author of the book For Your Own Good, lays out a pretty she was also a Holocaust survivor. She lays out a pretty strong case for like, you know, early twentieth century Germany having this poisonous pedagogy that also involved beating the shit out of your kids until I was like illegal to love your children, yeah, to obey you, and how basically this is how you make a torture.
And the book is called for.
Your Own Good and yeah, I mean I really think it is like under valued in politics, Like how much this culture of corporal punishment, which is yeah, Americans have like moved away from universal approval of corporal punishment, we're still like a lot higher than other Western democracies in
that regard. And like on a national level, we're the only country in the world that hasn't ratified the UN Conventions on the Rights of a Child, which include like having a name and like not being beaten and not being thrown into like juvie solitary.
Oh well, that's why America can't touch that. We need to incarcerate the children.
Yeah, the children yearn for the cells.
But it's also just like a lot of it actually was like worries that like evangelicals like would sort of object to the the interference in there.
It's an infringement on their religious freedom to be the shit out of babies.
Yeah, and their parental rights, which is another buzzword of this.
This movement pnal rights is a red flag for me.
Oh yeah, no, I hear parental rights and I think you want to beat the shit out of your kids.
You don't want your children to learn science.
Yeah, you at a homeschool and under educate your kids or miseducate.
You want to cause a Measle's outbreak exactly.
But that's like for us because we're weirdos. We're like obsessively clued into this stuff. If you're not, Like parental rights is like religious freedom is, like it sounds good, Yeah, it's an effective marketing slogan, but like what it means is like we're going to show up at the school board and yell about how I mean.
And Trump is like bought.
Into this obviously because he knows where his bread is buttered. He has savvy, Like he's like you guys do the policy. But like his current parental rights based his biggest like policy that he's advocating is like denying federal funding to any school with any vaccine a mandate, which is basically just like make measles great again, like bring back diphtheria.
I think, like, yes, the Maga movement, ister of the the efflorescence, the apotheosis of this steadily building power, but like there's also just like fifty years of power building
behind it. And like even if Trump was defeated at the federal level, which like I profoundly hope he is sorry to come out as like a you know, partisan a voter, like a hashtag a voter, but like I think it would be just a nauseatingly it's a horrifying thought that he I mean, first of all, you would absolutely enact every item in this theocratic agenda, starting with a national abortion band like that would happen in the first hundred days, I think, which would just functionally plunge
American women into like a very very dark septocemic nightmare.
Yeah, the dark place that we're going as a coffin.
Yeah yeah, yeah. But even should he lose, which you know, hope. There's still twenty two states where abortion is outlawed or severely restricted, and these places are becoming care deserts.
Like medical residents.
My extremely sexy partner is a medical residen so I know more about the state of medicine than I otherwise would. But like residents don't want to do their residencies in states with abortion restrictions.
They're like, right, given.
A choice, gynecological providers just aren't practicing there anymore. Like even if you know, even your primary focus is not abortions, or even if your primary focus is you know, pregnancy care, they just don't want to They just don't want to work there.
Well, also, first of all that, but second of all, it's like, if you're in the er, you're going to experience pregnancy loss because it happens in one in five pregnancy.
Right, So they're choosing to work in states where they're not going to go to jail for doing medicine.
Yeah, Like they don't want to incur the moral injury of not being able to apply the standard of care to patients in extremely common situations such as incomplete miscarriage and you know, pregnancy loss, whether you know self induced or just like miscarriage is super common and nobody talks about it.
It's more common than we an Ectopic pregnancy is so much more common than people realize. Like there are so many things that your body can do to betray you that you need a doctor's help with just ordinary pregnancy. And then after the baby is born, then your lustrous hair all falls out.
Yeah, like ordinary pregnancy is so fraught with like weird body horror like, but anyway, that's besides the point.
Whatever.
The point is someone presents with abdominal pain and er and it turns out to be an a topic pregnancy, and like you can't do standard of care like dilation and cure tash procedures without checking with the hospital lawyer. Like that is a really bad position for a care
provider to be in. So when you have these fundamentally unscientific laws, right that are produced by people who don't know anything about pregnancy and are like very intentionally ambiguous so that cautious institutions will sort of interpret them at maximally interpret them. Like the life of the mother, how dead does she have to be?
First?
Yeah, she has to be almost dead, right, and then sometimes she winds up dying because almost dead is tough to judge, Like, it just winds up this grotesque sort of farce of medicine and very directly, like residents don't want to train, doctors don't want to practice in these places, and so, you.
Know, right, so this ends up killing more people than just the ones hemorrhaging in the parking lot. There are people who have completely unrelated problems who are now unable to access unrelated kinds of care because the doctors just aren't there.
Yeah, Or people who have ordinary wanted pregnancies who can't access neonatal care, who have to drive hours and hours and hours to like get checkups, like you know, I mean, human reproduction is like a pretty major part of like life.
And a lot of people are doing it.
Yeah, like it's sort of how you know, it's just people do it all the time, and like not being able to access medical care around like the entire spectrum of like reproduction is pretty catastrophic. But yeah, it also impacts all the people not engaging in reproduction at this moment in time, like doctors who are just like fuck this, I'm not wearing out a dar in Tennessee, you know, because I want to be able to treat patients.
Without a lawyer in the room.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
I mean, and then there are doctors who are bigots and doctors who are happily on board with with abortion bands. But like, do you want that to be the only doctor in your county? I don't think so, you know, it's just it's a really grim situation. And I just like, I'm such an absolutist about bodily autonomy. It's like, if you don't own your body, you are not a full citizen, period,
end of story. Like if if a major organ in your body is treated as a controlled substance, like you are not a full and equal citizen with rights, which I would like to be.
I aspire to it. Yeah, So I want to ask you one more question about your book and I will let you go. I told you that I wouldn't keep you very long, and I lied.
But it's like, it's just because I like talking to you.
So it's I think I've done the majority of the topics.
You can't.
You can't be like, oh, it's about your book, which you should buy listeners.
Pre order it now wherever you buy a books.
And if you like the delcent tones of my voice, which are I shouldn't have had you to I rate in my audience books.
You brush that passage.
I'm a professional talker now, yeah.
Yeah, well I narrated the audio book and then was like, why did I write such complicated sentences?
Afterwards?
So now that I read my own writing like on a regular basis out loud, which is new for me. Right, so you know, I have my podcast and I'm writing my little scripts and then I'm reading into a little microphone. Now that I struggle with that. I noticed while I was reading your book that oh I wouldn't be able to read this out loud. Where would I breathe? I know it was because I write like that too, and it's something I'm like really grappling with right now.
She's like call me ten clubs.
I'm like, ah, fuck, this sentence is this paragraph? This sentence is a paragraph. Stop it.
Like I really really lost, really lost momentum on that one.
Yeah, I know, but like I managed to get through it. And if you if you enjoy the dulcage sounds of my voice, you can hear it for like I don't know, eight hours or whatever. I as so weird being like listen to my voice, but you know, invite me into your mind. Yeah, but I do think it's nice as an author to read your audiobook because I can like get mad and like, you know, emphasize stuff that I think is important.
And also I'm a.
Theater kid, like, like, I don't have many opportunities to perform, and it is a performance and it's it's fun.
But yeah, and that comes out at the same time as the physical book.
Yes, it comes out audio ebook, physical book with a cool snake on it.
Oh yeah, Oh, I guess this is an audio medium. The listener can't see that I'm showing the cool cover.
Yeah, it's got a cool snake, a red and black snake on the cover. I've named him Rocco. He has a cross for a tongue. If you're looking for a book to give to the metal head in your life, oh yeah, it's metal heads, atheists, degenerates.
Everyone is going to love this book.
It's perfect for everyone.
And if you're light on cash flow want it.
For supporting the authors is ask your library to stock it or your local bookstore, because library orders are really important and you can just like put in a request in your library system and that is super helpful.
Hell yeah, everybody go to your library's website right now and request that they purchase a copy of Wild Faith by Talia Lavin. Yeah, tallywhere else can people find you online?
So I have a newsletter. It's on button down. I left Substack because they were like, we're never going to censor Nazis, but we will sensor porn. And I was like, I don't like your priorities, so I left for button down. So it's buttondown dot com. Slash the Sword in the Sandwich, or if you just google, the Sword in the Sandwich comes up. Most Tuesdays I write about like the horrific
state of politics, et cetera. And then Fridays I write an essay about a different sandwich on Wikipedia's list of notable sandwiches, and so far I've written one hundred and eleven sandwiches.
The sandwich content alone is worth the price of admission. You need to find out about these sandwiches.
I mean it just and I get really deep into like the history and the provenance and like like ah, the shifting of people's led to this sandwich. But so I get really deep into it, and then you can also find me on Blue Sky, where I most of the time now because Twitter is just like robots and
Nazis and Nazi robots. Where I'm at Swords Jew. I'm still on Vishy Twitter as Mobi Dick Energy, and you know, if you want to say hi or invite me to speak at your synagogue or bookstore, I'm at Tealill even writes at gmail dot com.
Or church if you're like cool.
Yeah, if it's like a cool church, Yeah, you show up and they pass you a snake.
Yeah, exactly.
Oh God, I didn't do enough speaking of times for this book.
Well, Telly, thank you so much for coming on today again. The book is Wild Faith by Talia Lavin, and you can pre order it now wherever books are sold, and you should request it from your library.
Yeah, we stand civic services, and I'm a huge fan of public libraries and also of Molly Conger.
So thanks for having me on and take care, Bye.
Bye, Welcome back to It Could Happen Here and our special two part series Irregular Naval Warfare and You, where James and I teach you how you too can challenge the US Navy's dominance of the seas, or at least the coasts for fun and profit. Actually, today, last episode we talked about people challenging the US Navy's coastal dominance. Today we're talking about doing the same thing for the
Russian Navy. So that's gonna be fun. And of course the Navy of mianmar which is a bit of a different class from the US and Russian Navy, but no less interesting.
Yeah, still fun. I'd love to see a boat lose.
Yeah, Well, I just like boats going down, you know, I just hate a boat.
Yeah, yeah, US, the jocas many many such cases.
I'm going to start with Ukraine, and then we're going to throw to James to talk about our friends in Myanmar and how they have repurposed civilian technology and stolen weapons to counter a navy without really having one of their own. But first Ukraine. In twenty fourteen, when the Russian Army invaded eastern Ukraine and took Crimea, Ukraine lost a significant portion of it's already not that impressive navy.
Most of their boats were just taken by Russia, along with a number of sailors who defected, a lot of other sailors fled the region, leaving behind their homes and cities like Sebastopol to continue serving their country in a war that a decade later is still ongoing. One of these sailors, who is a Sebastopol native and had to flee his home, possibly forever, in order to continue serving his country, is the current commander of Ukraine's navy, Admiral Nazpapa.
He leads a navy that is almost without manned ships, and on paper, it is utterly incapable of challenging Russia's legendary Black Sea Fleet. Since the age of the Czars, the Black Sea Fleet has been infamous as a pillar of Russian military power. However, also since the age of the Tsars, it's had a nasty tendency to get utterly housed by enemies that should have been able to beat.
It, right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, not the first time it's taken an unexpected loot.
Yeah.
It has a legendary history that doesn't mean good.
There's bad legends out there, you know. Yeah, it's well known. Yeah, today that.
Enemy is Ukraine. Since the expanded Russian invasion in twenty twenty two, just two years, Ukraine has destroyed or badly damaged more than a third of the Black Sea fleet, despite having no battleships or destroyers in the sea to counter Russian naval power, they have done enough damage to reopen Odessa and at least one other port on the Black Sea to international commerce, which has provided Ukraine with a crucial economic and strategic lifeline. And that's a remarkable achievement,
sinking a third of the Black Sea fleet. And basically when you reopen a port, that means that you have taken away naval dominance from a country that has a navy and you don't. That's pretty good, pretty good stuff. Over the last two years, Ukraine had damaged, irreparably or sunk seven active landing ships and one to seven active landing ships and one landing vessel. I don't know the difference.
They've fucked up a lot of boats. They have destroyed a submarine with seed to ground capability that was docked for repairs. They have sunk a cruiser, the capital ship of the entire Black Sea fleet.
The Moskva.
They've also sunk a supply vessel and a handful of patrol boats and missile bow and a number of other boats have been damaged. That's a significant rate of casualties, especially when you consider that every actually destroyed vessel, we're looking at a year's multiple years lead time to replace. You cannot make naval vessels very quickly anymore. Back during the big dub dub dose, the US did, but nobody really does that anymore, not with the big ones at least.
You just roll through that.
We were just we were just yeating aircraft carriers into.
The sea, just just flotting them out. Yeah, don't take them out a week. Yeah, it's because it's because Rosy de Riveto was really riveting at a high speed.
She was, she was, she was quite a riveter. So at the start of hostilities, Turkey, which controls access to the Black Sea forbade any additional military vessels, or at least military vessels of significant size, from entering the area. What this means this has a significant impact on how well Ukraine strikes work, because even if Russia can replace the losses physically, they can can't actually get replacements into the Black Sea easily. They can't sail new shit past
the Turks. The Turks are not allowing that right now. So again this is a situation that has kind of favored the way in which Ukraine has adapted to countering Russian naval dominance. It is possible that at the present rate of attrition, the Black Sea Fleet could be rendered inoperable in less than two years. Like if they keep going at this rates, like eighteen months or something before,
there's not really much of a fleet anymore now. If Ukraine had accomplished this task with a traditional navy using standard naval tactics, this would have been an impressive victory given the disparity in resources between the two nations. But they have done all this with a mix of cruise missiles, many of which are produced in country, aerial drones, and
new bespoke locally produced suicide drone boats. This irregular naval warfare has been successful enough that one Rand Corporation engineer and analyst, Scott Savatz, described the Black Sea Fleet as a fleet in being quote, it represents a potential threat that needs to be vigilantly guarded against, but one that remains in checks for now. And I'm going to quote from a New York Times article on the topic. It
brought a little more context. Ukraine has effectively turned around ten thousand square miles in the western Black Sea off its southern coast, into what the military calls a gray zone, where neither side can sail without the threat of attack.
James Heapy, Britain's Armed Forces minister, told a recent security conference in Warsaw that Russia's Black Sea fleet had suffered a functional defeat, and contended that the liberation of Ukraine's coastal waters in the Black Sea was every bit as important as the successful counter offensives on land and Cersona and Kharkiv last year. The classical approach that we studied at military maritime academies does not work now, Admiral Nese
Papas said. Therefore, we have to be as flexible as possible and change approaches to planning and implementing work as much as possible, not at articles about a year old or so.
So.
The Neptune anti ship missile is one of the prides of Ukraine's Nascon arms industry. Neptune missiles are credited with destroying the Moskva in April of twenty twenty two. Ukraine also has access to several Western anti ship missiles, including these storm Shadow and Scalp missiles. I believe the storm Shadow comes from your your folks, right, James, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
and these seem to be pretty effective missiles. These obviously much more advanced, and these are modern naval weapons, right, These are much more advanced than, for example, the weapons to who these have. These are the kind of things that can counter to some extent modern anti missile technology. For an example of kind of how that tends to work, they used a barrage of I believe it was mostly
storm shadows to rain death on the crime import of Sebastopol. Recently, seven out of eighteen of the missiles fired made it through Russian air defenses, and these damaged or destroyed four landing ships in a single strike. And these are sizeable naval vessels. This is the most recent attack, although as after I wrote this, there was another attack on the Kirch Bridge. I'm not really sure how that took place
yet that seems to have shut it down again. But that gives you an idea of like what you actually have to do. How much of these missiles you have to put in the air to get some through? And that's not too bad, right, eighteen missiles seven get through four ships down. That's a really good rate of return.
Especially when you consider that, like you know, we were talking in our first episode about how the US is spending significant resources on maintaining its defending its carriers, right, Russia does not have the same ability to keep good lord saying munitions no, and so like that's a finite resource, right, they're their means of defining that. Defending their ships and
defending really anything against missiles are a finite resource. So any time you can even if the ship doesn't get sunk, if the ship has to deploy one of these missiles, which it doesn't, which the whole country doesn't have very many of, that they're still a win.
Now, this is we are talking about irregular naval warfare. And then this is not This is not what most people would have considered a traditional naval conflict prior to the expansion of hostilities in Ukraine. However, we are talking this is very different than the case of the Huthies. Ukraine is a state. It doesn't have a massive arms industry, but it has one, and it has the support of nations with sizable arms industries. Right, so we are not talking about this. We are going to talk about the
aspects of Ukrainian a regular naval warfare. That are some guys that are hobbyists building shit. Yeah, this is not that part yet, but I think this information is kind of significant and that it shows the tactical use of anti ship cruise missiles and their ability to significantly shape an operational environment even when the country using them has minimal conventional naval assets of their own. It is largely through the use of these missiles that Ukraine has been
able to reopen their black Sea ports. That matters to people seeking to understand both this conflict and the future of unconventional naval warfare. I mean, I guess you could say this is the future of conventional naval warfare, but I think we're still leaning on the unconventional side at the moment, at least in terms of how doctrine is changing as a result of this. So maybe I should
update how we're defining this. But for our purposes as people unlikely to have access to cruise missiles but significantly likely to find ourselves waging an unconventional war than having cruise missiles, it's more relevant to look at the new weapons systems Ukraine has developed that have helped them lock down the Black Sea fleet using civilian hobbyists, And this is where we get to drones. Ukraine's conventional aerial drones
are a mix of actual military hardware. I'm talking about stuff like the Bairaktar, the Turkish drone, which is like kind of like the Predator A right, it's like an actual military product. But the majority in terms of numbers of drones that Ukraine is fielding are civilian drones, or
at least drones that started out a civilian technology. A lot of these are now built to be military, but they're still based on these designs that started with people hacking and cobbling together civilian drones and outside of naval stuff.
Prior to the war, there had been a lot of veterans and hobbyists who were veterans trying to convince the Ukrainian military that it needed to adopt drone warfare on a large scale, the kind of drone warfare that you can do with these less expensive drones, and they received a lot of pushback until the war started and these guys just took to the field and started fucking murking Russian armed units and infantry and killing generals and shit.
And now Ukraine has integrated in a way that everyone is going to follow, like Ukrainian like battalions have like companies now that are drone assault companies, and like line battalions, and.
Within infantry you have people used artillery eating transit forward observers.
Yes, all over.
They have set a goal for this year producing at least a million and ideally more like two million drones and at least from what I read, that looks like very plausible. And most of these are quite small, right, but that doesn't mean obviously ineffective.
I know they buy a lot of their drones in the UK because the UK has consistently kicked itself in the nuts when it comes to like Brexit, and so the pound is significantly weaker, and so they're able to get the drones at a cheaper price and then drive them all the way across. Yeah, you know people who've done that. I was going to go join them, but never worked it out.
Yeah, And you know there are a number of different like these. These drones earlier in the war had an easier time being effective and causing casualties on the Russians then later This is something that you know, kind of the hooplaw and support, which I think is necessary that Ukraine. It's lead some people to discount the degree to which Russian forces have adapted and gotten smarter. And one of the ways in which they've adapted and gotten smarter is
in blocking drones and using drones of their own. You know, one of the stories the last couple of weeks is that Russia has succeeded in carrying out strikes on advanced weapons systems like samsites deep in Ukrainian territory. They've extended their kill chain beyond what they used to be capable of, and that's because they've adapted. They're also adapted with less efficacy at blocking drones. In attacks on naval vessels, some of this has been kind of funny. I want to
read a quote from a Business Insider article here. Russia is painting silhouettes on naval vessels on land to try and trick Ukraine, which keeps destroying its warships. In an intelligence update on Wednesday, the UK Ministry of Defense said that silhouettes of vessels have also been painted on the side of ks, probably to confuse the uncrude aerial vehicle operators. They showed there's some images of this. They don't seem convincing to me. I don't know if I think this is working.
This is great these I love this, like they have a cardboard navy next. Yeah, it's very bugs bunny. Yes, they're not working as well as bugs would. They've a hole in the side of the cliff face and crushing into it, keeps throwing. It's very funny.
I mean obviously they just Ukraine just sank like or damn it badly damaged four boats. So I don't think this is I haven't seen evidence that this is working well. Their actual like jamming efforts have been much more successful.
Right, Yeah, they always will be on civilian One of the thing that's really interesting compared to Mianma is that Ukraine tends to rely on modified off the shelf civilian drones. Right, your dji is that kind of thing in Meanma because of where a lot of the PDFs are. Because but they increasingly do control the borders, but they haven't always.
They have been making their own drones. The group called Federal Wings you can find them on telegram, who make their own drones, and I think those seem to be less the jammers that the essays that the Tamado has uh Chinese made that Jamma rifles you see them all the time in captured weapon cashes, but they don't seem to be having as much impact on these homemade drones, which is really interesting.
Yeah, yeah, and it's you know, I've mentioned a couple of times we're doing this in part because the odds that people listening might be involved in an a regular conflict are not zero.
You Know.
What I think about when I say that is not that there's high odds for any individual person fighting themselves in that situation.
But there is.
Given the number of people who listened to this podcast, probably someone who is not currently involved in a conflict that will find themselves that way in the future. And I base that in part on the fact that all of our friends in Myanmar who are currently fighting a war were a couple of years ago delivery drivers and you know, playing pubg online and not really thinking they would wind up as insurgents.
Now I've spoken to a number of people who are currently fighting not in Mianma, who have listened to our Meanma podcast and realized the capacity of three D printing, yeah, to be very useful and and so like, even in that sense, it's already happening. But yeah, don't no one in the IMA, Like many of them said that their entire combat experience is playing pubg Yeah, now they're lurking ships.
Yeah.
So anyway, it bears thinking about this stuff. And this brings me back to Ukraine's irregular drone warfare units, which again a lot of these guys started out as civilian enthusiasts who expanded responded to the outbreak or at least expansion of hostilities by expanding their hobby into a real
world military effort that had a real world effect. Civilian drones were crucial in the Battle of Kiev, allowing Ukraine to do severe damage to that massive Russian armored column heading towards the city and providing intel that led to the assassination of multiple general level officers. So it is perhaps not surprising that Ukraine looked to the same group of volunteer hobbyists when it came time to expand their
naval arsenal. And there's a really good article I found in CNN by Sebastian Shukla, Alex Marcott and Daria Tarasova. And I actually want to give you the title of this article. Yeah, I'll try to thriller into the show. Notes is exclusive rare access to Ukraine's sea drones part of Ukraine's fight back in the Black Sea. Haven't really seen the word fight back use that way, but there you go. So I'm going to read a quote from
that article. A government linked Ukrainian fundraising organization called United twenty four has sourced money from companies and individuals all around the world, pooling funds to disperse it to a variety of developers and initiatives from defense to soccer matches. The entire outfit is very security conscious, insisting on strict guidelines on filming and revealing identities. Those who seen and met with declined to give their full names or even
their ranks within Ukraine's armed forces. On a creaky wooden jetty, a camouflaged sea drone pilot says he wants to go by shark. In front of him is a long, black hard show briefcase. He unveils a bespoke multi screened mission control, essentially an elaborate gaming center combined complete with levers, joysticks, a monitor, and buttons that have covers over switches that
shouldn't accidentally be knocked with labels like blast. The developer of the drone who asked to remain anonymous, said their work on sea drones only began once the war started. It was very important because we did not have many forces to resist the maritime state Russia, and we needed to develop something of our own because we didn't have the existing capabilities. So again, these are hobbyist design I mean, this guy's not really a hobbyist any more, but that's
how he started. He's only not a hobbyist because the military recognized the value of what he was doing. And the current iterations of this sea drone weigh a little over two thousand pounds with an explosive six hundred and sixty one pound payload, a five hundred mile range and a max speed of fifty miles per hour. That is
a significant weapons system. Yeah, multiple sea drones have been used to strike Russian assets in the Black Sea, and drones were involved in a successful attack that severely damaged the Kirch Bridge last July, rendering it impassable since until September. So these have had a real battlefield effect and they probably will continue to do so. The developer of these drones told CNN these drones are a completely Ukrainian production. They are designed drawn and tested here. It's our own
production of holes, electronics and software. More than fifty percent of the production of equipment is here in Ukraine. And that's really significant because you know, I think we're all aware of the difficulty Ukraine has had getting weaponry lately from the West as a result of fucking around in Congress, and so it is a necessity for them to be able to develop weapon systems like this that can interdict and counteract more advanced and expensive weapon systems and can
be produced indigenously. You know, I don't think we have seen a mass suicide boat attack. I'm interested in what happens when we do, like with more significant numbers than we've seen deployed. I kind of wonder the degree to which the Russians have gotten good at spotting this stuff. I've come across at least a couple of stories of these boats likely destroyed on approach. So they certainly don't
always work even a majority of the time. But given the cost of these things they don't have to get through the majority of the time, very much worth it right now. In that interview with The New York Times, Admiral Najpapa caution that Ukraine is still outgunned in the Black Sea. Even though the Russians no longer have supremacy, they still have air superiority. They are still able to lunch from the sea long range missiles at Ukrainian targets,
including civilian targets. So this is not again a situation that should be portrayed as them having their own way.
Their ability to kind of interdict the sea has been The primary effects of it have been number one, the reopening of trade in the Black Sea, and earlier in the war, by locking down the ability of these landing ships to put more troops on ground and by doing damage to the Kurch Bridge, they were able to slow Russian reinforcements in Russian materiel from entering the war zone in order to this aided in some of the advances,
particularly in areas like Carson. At this moment, the situation has changed because again the Russians aren't just kind of like sitting around doing the same thing over again, or
at least not always. And we don't tend to talk as much about successes on the Russian side of things, but that is an important part of the story and one of the things the Russians have done is kind of acknowledged that the Black Sea Fleet may not be a fleet in being forever and certainly cannot be relied upon to handle everything they initially thought it would handle. And so Russian engineers spent a significant period of time building a sizeable new railroad that connects Rostov and southern
Russia to Mariopol and occupied southern Ukraine. This has allowed them to get high volume shipments into the area and supply troops to the area along Ukraine's southern front without relying on that bridge or relying on naval landings.
Right.
So, the fact that Ukraine has been able to take out for landing ships recently is good. That's a wind for Ukraine. It reduces Russian capability, but it is not half the same effect that it would have had, for example, two years earlier. Right, Yeah, because Russia has also evolved, and among other things, railroads are a lot easier or a lot harder to destroy to take out.
Right.
It's easy to damage a railroad, but they're easy to fix. It doesn't take a lot to get some guys over to fix a damage sunk of railroad, fixing a bridge that's been blown up, or a sunk boat is a lot harder.
Yeah, absolutely, I mean, and there are people within Russia even who are sabotaging railways say it's like it's very high stakes for them, and it's relatively low cost for the Russian state to fix that stuff, so like it's not as effective.
Yeah, but I think this gives you an idea of kind of like what we're looking at when we look at this kind of ongoing A regular conflict is the side that does not have access to a functional navy, not able to interdict or destroy fleets, but able to
stop them from dominating the coast. And when you can stop them from dominating the coast, you have effectively denied them terrain that they can act in without being countered, and you have also denied them from stopping you from acting in that same terrain, even if you don't have total safety in that area. That opens up the operational possibilities substantially. And this is something that I kind of don't think is going to get put back in the bag.
Even if some of these Star Wars ass weapons systems do come out in the near future, you know, maybe that'll have an impact in the immediate term on people like the houthies. But I don't think think that it really will on you know, for example, what Ukraine's doing right, Yes, Russia.
Can't keep up with getting decent small arms, body armor, grenades and ship legs. There's no way it's going to implement some kind of massive star Wars system over its navy. Not right now, not in the middle of a conflict. That's it's struggling to supply.
Yep, you know what, here's an ad break.
All right, we're back and we are traveling around the world. Spend your little globe in your head and look for Meanma, which is of course in Asia. Now I'm talking about two different I guess anti ship sabotage or attack or two different ways ships have been sunk in the EMMA. I'll start with the first one, which is undoubtedly the flashiest, just because it's fun. So a ship in the port of Yeah, about about a month ago, so we're recording
on a twenty. It's about the first of March. It was in the river, in the river in yangon right, and it was carrying allegedly carrying jet fuel. Now, if you follow Burmese activists, people in the Burmese Freedom Movement, they will. One of their demands for a long time has been to stop supplying the Hunter with jet fuel, which would in turn stop it being able to bomb villages, schools, civilians, PDF formations, just about anyone in the country. It's bombed
at some point in the last couple of years. And they haven't been exactly right. They haven't been able to stop the supply of jet fuel coming to the Hunter. So they've taken it into their own hands. And what they did on the first of March was that they snuck onto a boat. So two this is the story from the Burmese National Unity Government's Ministry of Defense. Anyway, combat divers snuck onto this boat planted a kilogram of
TNT or a charge equivalent to kilogram of TNT. Robert and I've both spoken to people who make explosives in memrs.
We do.
We definitely know the PDF has access to a range of explosives. They said it on a five hour fuse and it blew up in the middle of the night, and there's definitely footage of the ship on fire having
blown up. Now, this is pretty remarkable for never real like this is like why the United States has units like the Navy seals right, like the higher speed guys, because it is not easy to scuba dive across a harbor, climb onto a ship, send an explosive charge without being detected, and then leave that ship and have the charge go off and sink the ship without you being compromised, without
the charge itself being like compromised, and the ship being saved. Right, this is some like this is some classic like this is why they are a special units within the US military.
Now.
The PDF very obviously did not have combat dives. Two years ago, I was looking into hobby scuba diving in Yangon. The rivers in that area are extremely muddy and visibility is very low, So the people who you find diving in that area are not so much like hobby scuba divers or free divers. But there's salvage divers and there's a whole little industry of people. And these people are diving in equipment that I would not consider safe or reliable.
It's clamping an air hose in between your teeth and diving down and trying to find there's a large deposit of coal in one of the rivers in Yangon because of a ship that's sunk. There was a coarse copper which everyone all around the world, including the bigcong in Santia, are stealing copper. There's iron, right, So these people are diving down and trying to collect scrap and sell that for whatever minimal amount they can.
Right.
It's an extremely dangerous and extremely low income. It's one of the sort of really high risk, low reward jobs that you get in economies where people are struggling to make ends meet. Right, So those are the only divers
I can find evidence of in Yangon. I don't think it was them who did this, because you have to have a boat above you with a pump if you're diving with a rubber hose in your teeth, right, So it seems like somebody in within the They said it was a Yangon PDF, that's what they attribute it to,
so that would be one of these. It would likely be an underground group within the PDF, right, some people living in the city who were able to sneak onto this boat, set a charge and blow it up, and they would also had to have intelligence at the boat where it was, what it was carrying, et cetera. It's a pretty pretty daring mission that this is the first one like this we've seen and we haven't seen anything since. But it's of course possible that this is a story
that we're being told. In fact, they had like someone undercover on the ship, right or like they had some other means of getting this charge onto the ship, but one way or another they managed to blow up this ship carrying few, which is a significant detrimu Yeah, right, that's how they get most of their shit. It's not over land, especially with more the.
Terrain there is just absolutely, like even with modern technology, difficult to get significant amounts of shit through.
They're resupplying some of their outposts that are ten miles from a town with helicopters right now, like a the terrain is burly, and b they don't have the PDF has denied them access that any time they send out a convoy, it gets attacked, so sending out plus you know that their land border crossings are increasingly falling into the hands of the PDFs and the ROS, So getting stuff through the ocean is one of the ways that they can still get stuff. And if this keeps happening,
then they will make that more expensive for them. And they're not exactly a wealthy hunter even though, I guess Minna Lung just made himself an air Force one recently. I was just looking at it. Today's good. He's got himself too luxury. Yeah, they called it dictators like he's upgraded from president class. Nice. Yeah, yeah, yes, he has
in many ways. So yeah, that's one way that the PDF has been blowing up ships in the Yangon, Robert, do you know who else has been blowing up ships in the yang in Yangon?
Well, we are sponsored entirely by the British Navy circa the mid eighteen hundreds, so I would guess them, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Lots of repressed, repressed feelings and growing up a lot of cabin boys with deep trauma. Anyway, here's the ass.
Yeah, all right, we beca We hope you enjoyed that.
That pivot one of our best ones yet. And we're talking about the Arakan Army now. So the Arakan Army not to be confused with the Rakhan Range of Salvation Army, different group. Arakan is a name of what is now a Rakaine state before it was colonized by the Burmese. That was I think Arakan was a king before it was colonized by the Burmese, so that that's where that refers to. It's a geographical appellation rather than like necessarily an ethnic one. The Rakaine would be the ethnic group.
So what the AA have done is sunk I think at least four Hunter ships now, and most of these ships are kind of they're like the They look like big Higgins boats. They're like landing craft or like car ferries, like flat bottom with a bow that goes down. Right. I rode around a lot in the Marshall Islands in little landing craft like that because they can get them in. They don't have like docks, so they can just ride that right up to the beach and then drop the
front and off you go. And they use them a lot. The Hunter doesn't have like per se marines that they don't have maritime infantry, but they use them to transport their regular army around, right, and they use them to transport them up river. They also use them a lot in Rakaine State to shell AA positions and any townships that they've decided they want to wipe off the map
and kill all the people in right. So these these boats have been a real like thorn in the side of the Aracan Army after Operation ten twenty seven, when they joined with two other groups to form the Three Brotherhood Alliance, A launch attacks on the Hunter all over VMA, and so what they've been doing, it appears, is using underwater mines to sink these ships, which is interesting, right, Like, I guess the mines are like a very old technology, right,
it's probably one hundred years plus underwater mines have existed. It seems the way that, like, the reason they're able to get away with using what is the relatively dated technology is because the Hunter doesn't expect to encounter anything, right, and so has not equipped its ships as such, Like they do have stuff like submarines, but that's not what's getting sunk. What's getting sun to these big kind of
landing craft riverboats. And it seems that they're using mines and then once they disabled the ship, they're then attacking it with small boats, small arms like indirect fire mortars and stuff. I saw one post that suggested they'd use which is pretty cool if they did. The Burmese military has these like tank destroyers. It's a tank, it's what
it is. And they've captured the AA has captured a number of these, right, And I've seen suggestions that they're using some of these on like they just set up an ambush along the banks of the river, right and as the ship comes in they can they can maybe disable it with a mine and then attack it with those.
But there are videos online you can find them of the AA sinking these ships, and then they've done some amazing drone photography of like they obviously they then like staged their units on the ships, like all saluting the drone and they had the Arakan Army flags and they're actually really cool photos of them taking these ships. But again, like I think this might be the first sinking of a Burmese naval ship since since independence from Britain. Like,
I can't think that they were. They really haven't played much of a role at all in its conflicts with the Eros, aside as from like basically kind of just shelling places when they want to do that. But there's never really been any significant opposition to them, and that's changed now they have to obviously, just like everywhere else, watch out for drones, right, drones have been used to a massive extent in Myanmar, and like the AA doesn't
have as many like associated PDFs. I haven't seen them doing as much of the drone stuff as the PDFs. The pdf tend to be like the more urban folks, right, the younger folks and the gen Z folks that we've spoken about before, and a lot of them have been very savvy with their use of drones. Like I said, you can look up Federal Wings and you can see them dropping bombs with drones on all kinds of stuff with their heavy metal soundtracks that they like. But that
it wasn't even drone here. It's pretty simple. It was just mine so things they love, mines and mead mines all over that country. But in this case, these I guess, massive what mines in the rivers. Given that the Hunter is the only only entity sending big boats up and down, you could set them at a certain depth where these small boats wouldn't hit them, and eventually one of the
Hunter boats is going to hit them, I guess. And so it's pretty basic technology, but it's still a massive step forward in terms of like a place where the state had complete impunity, it now doesn't. Right, they can't just cruise up and down these rivers shelling people. They were actually using some of the ships to evacuate soldiers and their families from a position. The soldiers they were trying to like, rather than surrendering, they were trying to
evacuate them and move them to somewhere else. The AA asked them to surrender, and they didn't. They tried to evacuate them, so then they mined the ships and took those out. I think the hunters like tried to spin this as like the AA is attacking civilians, but I think a Burmese Navy ship with a Burmese Navy flag, when those ships have just been shelling you, seems like a legit fro the target. To me, I think it's
very hard. It's you know, it's a hunter, but children on one of their naval ships rather than the AA who attacked the ship because it had children. You can hear in one of the things you can hear the AA are like attacking the ship in small boats and they're shouting like there are children on board, and you can hear them acknowledging it. And there are videos of the AA rescuing people who jumped overboard, rescuing them from the river, and then like, I guess they've just held
us POWs cool. Yeah, it's cool, it's interesting. Obviously, not many of us have access to underwater minds, but you know, maybe in a fictional future we might. Yeah.
Well, there you go, folks. This has been irregular naval warfare. And you a podcast about a regular naval warfare, and you.
Yeah, send us to your videos of yourselves in a regular naval war.
Yeah.
Absolutely, go out there.
Look how about this, Every listener, go out and sing one naval vessel, you know, doesn't matter who's.
Just any boat.
Any go sink a boat, any boat, take out, superyot, knock it out. You see a dinghy, take that fucker out, people kayaking, fuck them up, you know.
On a boat?
Absolutely, a banana boat for sure. One of those weird duck boat car things that they have in some city. Oh yeah, actually, you know what, you don't need to do anything with that that'll kill everybody on board on it.
Those things are traps. Just pray for those.
Yeah.
Any other boat. Yeah, you see a doughnut, you know, behind being behind a speedboat?
Oh yeah, murk it anyway, everybody go away.
Welcome to dick it app and here a podcast about things falling apart and putting it back together again. I'm Mia Wong, I'm with Garrison, and it is my singular honor and pleasure to introduce our guest, doctor Julia Serrano.
She is the author of many books including Excluded, Making Feminist and core movements more inclusive, Sex Stop, How Society Sexualizes Us, and How We Can Fight Back, Outspoken, A Decade of Transgender Activism and Transfeminism, and most famously, Whipping Girl, a new edition of which is coming out in March. Doctor Serrano, welcome to the show.
Hi, thanks for having me.
I'm really really I'm really happy you can join us. So okay. Whipping Girl, I think is really one of the one of quietly the most influential books of the twenty first century, to the extent that in kind of classic trans woman fashion. I don't think I don't think people realize that the ideas that it introduced have an origin. So so for people who haven't read the book, and you should, this book is great. I guarantee you have
seen its influence. If you've ever heard someone like who's not trans referred to as sis like, that's that's from this book. The concept of misgendering is also from this book. The word trans misogyny like also from this book, and this I think gets at something from the twenty fifteen second edition preface that you wrote, which is something I've been wondering about, is what is it like to sort of experience writing a book and have it just like ripple across society like this.
Yeah, it's uh.
I was very much hoping, and you know, as I was writing it, I was hoping that I thought that it would resonate with a lot of trans female and trans feminine people, and I hope trans communities more generally,
and the book. This is something that a lot of times people who pick up the book now and like the twenty twenties don't necessarily realize, is that he was reading anything about trans people outside of feminists and LGBTQ plus communities, and so I was basically just speaking to those groups, and I thought it would resonate with some people. But yeah, definitely it kind of went out into the world and did a bunch of stuff that I wasn't
necessarily expecting. And I'm very glad that the book has kind of touched a lot of people's lives and changed, you know, kind of societal understanding and quote unquote discourses about trans people.
So yeah, it must be kind of bizarre, like being twenty years ago writing about you know, caniche term like cis and now the richest man in the world thinks it's like the most evil word.
Yeah, it's quite bizarre, and I do want to definitely kind of clear this up, but I kind of make this clear in the preface. So I didn't in vet like sis versus trans like a that's like a prefix that has existed a long time, and I've since seen other people like point out, oh, this person was using it in nineteen ninety something, or some German writer like coined cis vestism or something like back a million years ago.
So what I will say is that when I when I put out the book, I was inspired by Emi Koyama, who was and is an awesome activist, intersex activist who's written a lot of really influential trans related essays over the years. And it was from her blog post that was the first time I saw sis and trans and
the idea of cis sexism. And at the time, it was while I was writing the book, and it really I was like, oh my god, this is kind of the overall idea I was talking about all these different facets of basically double standards between trans and non trans people, and so I kind of grabbed on to it, and I was really worried about it actually because nobody, almost nobody was using those terms. It was very niche at
the time, and so the book popularized that language. And so now it is kind of funny every once in a while seeing yes, over reactions by SIS people to the idea of SIS being a slur or whatever. So yeah, and so yeah, so that's definitely something that is kind of is the one thing I one thing I did coin in the book that has kind of also taken
a life on its own is trans misogyny. So that is something that kind of originated with this book and particularly a chap book that I wrote in two thousand and five that some of those essays became chapters of the book. And yeah, and so there are other ideas that kind of are out there, Like I think it was one of the first. I think it was the first book to talk about like the idea of SIS privilege misgendering is an idea was out there, but I
kind of dove into it a little bit deeper. So yeah, So there are definitely things I was doing at the time that I didn't know whether be to abstract or how they'd be taken up, And so yes, it's been very interesting.
Yeah, I wanted to talk about misgendering a bit because I think it's become this word that just means not saying someone's pronouns correctly, and I think that's, at the very best, like an incredibly reductionist and simplified version of the analysis that you were presenting. So I guess I
have two questions here. One, can you briefly sort of talk about what you were trying to get at when you sort of did your analysis of the process of gendering, and too, what do you think about the way that it's kind of become flattened into this I don't know, kind of weirdly narrow thing in modern discourse.
Sure, and a lot of the miss gendering definitely dovetails with the idea of passing, and a lot of my kind of diving into it in a particular way came from critiques that I had and other trans people had as well, but I kind of, you know, put them together in a particularly in the dismantling I think it's dismantling Sexual Privileged chapter where I kind of go through all these steps that lead to miss gendering, because I think people talk about trans people passing and also the
people will talk about other marginalized groups passing is whatever dominant majority group. The term obviously had long been used with regards to people of color passing is white and in kind of white racist, you know, us and other societies. So it's an old term, and a big problem with it is that it makes it sound like we're doing something active, that trans people are actively trying to deceive other people, with huge scare quotes around the word deceive.
And I really wanted to highlight to people that actually all of us very unconsciously and very compulsively gender every single person we meet, or at least that's how we're socialized to be.
And you know, you can work towards.
Getting you know, overcoming that, but I wanted to really highlight the fact that we see people, we automatically gender them, and that puts people who do not quite who your presumptions are wrong about. It puts us in difficult situations. It's a double bind, where do you reveal what you supposedly really are, or do you just allow people to
read you that way? And it works out very differently, for instance, between trans and say CIS gay people, because when cis gay people talk about passing is straight, their passing is something that they know that they are not, whereas for a lot of trans people, people read me as a woman and I understand myself.
To be a woman.
There's it's a very different dynamic because it's not like I'm not hiding anything, but people are presuming what I'm really passing as is I'm passing a CIS gender and people are assuming I'm sis gender when the trans is the thing that I might need to or feel like I need to clear up or other people might put pressure on me to either tell them that I'm trans
or be accused of deceiving them. So that's a little bit of kind of how I was approaching it when I started working on that idea and really stressing the idea of you can't understand miss gendering unless you understand that we make assumptions all the time, We gender people very actively, and you know, so trans people are often just reacting to that and dealing with that double bind.
Yeah, and this is something that I think is interestingly discussed in the book about like kind of this this issue with some of the sort of prevailing gender theories which thought of which think about sort of like femininity
and gender is pure performance. But and this is I think, like the argument that you were making that I think is really interesting is that something that I think is is very obvious to trans people is that so much of gender is how people perceive you and how you know and stuff that like you don't have any control over. It's how people sort of gender you. It's how people like construct a gender around you in ways that you don't really have control over.
Yeah, and that was a big thing. So in kind of I was writing the book in the mid two thousands, and so the nineteen nineties is when Judith Butler publishes Gender Trouble, which Butler never said all genders performance are all genders drag, Yeah, but that is, but that those are like slogans or soundbites that other people took from their book, right, and they were very popular at the time.
There's also there's a famous sociological article about doing gender, and so people were very focused on the way in which we create gender by doing it particular ways, and a lot of the slogans within trans communities were sort of like, oh, well, you know, I just have to do my gender differently, like more transgressively, and that will
like tear down all of gender. And I felt that there was you know, that is an aspect of things, and most of us, whether trans or cists, most of us have had the experience of maybe trying.
To perform our genders in a particular way in.
Order to like, you know, not you know, in order in order to get by in the world, in order to not be harassed by other people.
So we've all had that experience.
So while that's true, there's the other partner of that dance, and that's perception, and we're all perceiving people very actively, and we're like projecting our ideas and meanings onto them. And I felt like that was being under discussed at the time, and that was not only a huge part of Whipping Girl, but that's become a part of a lot of my other books, like including my most recent book, sext Up, How Society sexualizes us and.
How we can fight back.
One way that I would describe that book is it's talking about sex and sexuality, not from what people do, but from how we perceive and interpret sex and sexuality, because there are a lot of unconscious ideas, often really horrible ideas, really hierarchical ideas that are kind of built into the way we view the world. And interrogating that and so, yeah, that was a very big part of both Whippen Girl.
And then my writings since then.
Yeah, and I think I think that is something where things have gotten better in terms of in terms of how we think about gender, which I don't know, like things aren't perfect, but it definitely it definitely improved things a lot.
Agreed, we're going.
To take an ad break and when we come back, we're talking trans misogyny.
We're back. Yeah.
So then other thing I wanted to sort of talk about was I think, in like exactly the opposite process that happened to misgendering, trans misogyny has become a lot more expansive than your original sort of kind of narrow conception of it. And I think this has been changing a lot, especially in the last about half decade or so. So I was wondering what you think about the way that this concept has kind of taken on a life of its own. In recent years and what it's been doing since.
Yeah, So I feel like trans misogyny that there are a lot of different dialogues and discourses about it coming like people coming from different perspectives with it, and some people feeling like the world is doing things that I never suggested it was doing.
It's kind of hard to know like where to actually.
Come in on this, but for me, when I was first writing about it, I was first just noticing that a lot of the quote unquote transphobia that I was facing when people know as a trans woman was actually a lot of it was just misogyny, and a lot of it targeted like kind of my femininity rather than my transness, And so I wanted to write about that, and kind of the way that I framed it in the book was, which I think is a really useful kind of model for thinking about it, is that there
most of the types of sexism that feminists have described over the many years fall into two sort of camps, one of them being oppositional sexism, which is the idea that men and women are kind of perfectly opposite, mutually exclusive sexes that have different interests and attributes and desires, and so a lot of transphobia and homophobia are kind of like built into this idea that men and women are completely distinct.
And then the other one is traditional.
Sexism, which is the idea that femalists and femininity are less legitimate than malness and masculinity.
And a lot of CIS feminists have kind of.
Viewed all of that as just sexism, right, But when you break it down like that, it makes it clear that the double bind that a lot of feminists have talked about is actually kind of these two different forms of sexism. So if a CIS woman acts appropriately femininely, so appropriate with scare quotes. If a SIS woman acts femininely, she'll be seen as appropriate, but she'll be dismissed because femininity is dismissed in our culture, so that's the way
that she'll be delegitimized. Whereas if she acts in ways that are coded as masculine, and if she acts assertive or aggressive, then people will malign her for being kind of a barrant or deviant. Right, And so oppositional sexism helps keep traditional sexism in place because you can say that maln is a masculinity or superior but that only works if you can also make a clear distinction between you know, those people and people are female and.
Feminine, and so I think this plays out differently.
And I want to be really clear about this because some people have interpreted trans misogyny to mean that trans mail and trans masculine people don't experience misogyny, which is something I have never said. And obviously the fact that oppositional sexism is a form of sexism, and obviously trans maild trans masculine people experience that. But also depending upon how you're viewed by other people, I feel like this same double pined that affects this woman affects transmeild trans
masculine people differently. Where there's this tendency, like in a lot of anti trans discourses to dismiss trans masculine, especially trans masculine youth as being merely girls quote unquote who are like you know, misled or seduced by gender ideology, right, And there's a lot of real anti feminine and anti misogynistic ideas in there in addition to the fact that it it misgenders transmeld trans masculine people. And then if
trans mail trans masculine people when they experience transphobia. There's often you know, like they're seen as deviant for kind of breaking that role, but often the malness or their masculinity themselves are not, you know, denigrated in the same way because being now being masculine and are seen as good in our culture. It's just that if you trans male, trans masculine, it's like, well, you're quote unquote just a woman,
so you can't do it. So I think it plays out in this very complex way for a lot of trans mail trans masculine people, I think for trans female and transfeminine people, because our crossing of oppositional sexism also involves us kind of moving towards the female towards the feminine, that there's kind of those two forces intersect in a
way so that it's like exacerbated. And some of the ways I talk about this in Women Girl is that, well, we live in a world where masculinity is seen as natural and femininity is seen as artificial, and since trans people are also seen as artificial compared to sis gender people,
a lot of times we're viewed as doubly artificial. Furthermore, the idea that like women are seen as sex objects whereas men aren't seen as sex objects often are transitions or gender transgressions towards a female towards a feminine are presumed to be driven by sexual motives that can play
out in all sorts of ways. Whether this is the idea that we're like hypersexual or promiscuous, or that we want to be sexualized by other people, or you can see it a lot with the kind of the transgender predator is often coded as like a man who either has some kind of fetish or perversion or is just literally deceiving people to get into women's restrooms to do something horrific. So those are some of the ways that
it plays out. I feel that sometimes people view it in a cut or dried way that either they'll assume that trans misogyny means that trans mental trans mascum people don't experience misogyny, which again is not what that's about. Or sometimes people will like try to make really clear distinctions. There's kind of language like trans misogyny effect did versus trans misogyny. Exempt are the terms yeah, TME and TMA, which are not terms I've used.
And which or that I didn't coin them. They're not in the book.
And I think that when I first saw that language, and I've seen people use it in a way that appreciates the fact that some people are non binary, so it's a non identity based way.
Sometimes this can.
Play out in a really cut or dried sort of manner that you know, sometimes you know, whether it's intended this way or not, it can make it seem that, like, you know, just boiling down of really complex experience, people's complex experiences with different types of sexism into some people are privileged and some people are marginalized, which I think is a more general problem that happens kind of throughout all social justice movements.
So yeah, it turns people are not alien to having complex experiences be boiled down to three and four letter acronyms. So yeah, I mean.
I did this in Twitter form, so it was like a thread, so like now, people can't access threads unless you.
Have an account with Twitter. And it's from a couple of years ago.
But one of the things that I talked about was I wrote this essay about ten years ago about how CIS and trans is kind of a useful Those are useful terms, but sometimes people fall in between CIS and trans and sometimes they can be used in a way to talk about different double standards, like CIS people are treated one way, trans people are treated another.
But sometimes it can be used in like a sort of reverse.
Discourse way, where it's like, you know, CIS people of all the privileged, trans people of none of the privilege, and it can be used to kind of create this strict dichotomy that ends up excluding and invisibilizing some people's experiences. And I feel the same thing is happening with TMME and TMA. So I don't think that those terms need to necessarily be like, I don't think there's anything bad about those terms per se in and of themselves, but
I think sometimes they can be used in ways. And part of why I reference this this SIS and trans essay that I wrote many years ago. It appears in
my book Outspoken. I forget the complete title right now, which is but the reason why I bring that up is so sometimes what happens is that when people learn about SIS sexism, CIS people might be like, oh, I face the sexism, right If I'm a woman and I don't shave my legs, I'm facing sexism, And so then trans people say yeah, but it kind of plays out differently for us, and so sometimes in order to stop people from kind of making those claims, which I think
it is true that you know, a woman not shaving their legs, or if a man decides to put on a dress one day, regardless of whether they're sis or trans, they could experience sis sexism or transphobia. But it plays out differently for people who are actually members of that marginalized group. And then so then the marginalized group makes a distinction even sharper, and it just kind of becomes this escalating situation where the language and kind of battles
over it become even more intense. In a recent piece, one of the most recent pieces, if you go to like my medium site where my essays usually are now is it talks about the trans mass versus trans discourse in terms of what I call the cultural feminist doom loop, where and the doom loop refers to kind of these ideas where everyone like both sides are trying to talk about the reason why their experiences are legitimate, and then that seems as though the other sides are not legit,
and then that kind of cascades in a way that ends up not being very productive, but takes up a lot of energy on.
Places like Twitter.
Yeah, and I think I think that's something We've still seen about one trillion times variety of toxic ways. But what isn't toxic is the new third edition of Whipping Girl coming out in March with You can ask your local bookstore or pre order now and Yeah join us tomorrow for our discussion with Doctor Serrano of the Anatomy of Moral Panics. This is when it Could Happen Here. Trans people are great.
Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.
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