It Could Happen Here Weekly 179

you can make your own decisions. Welcome back to It could Happen here, a podcast about it happening here, which is, you know, these days normally about the fact that it's happening here, but today we're here to talk about a show where it happens somewhere else, a place that people aren't yet but may one day be in the future. We're talking about the Martian Revolution, with the great Mike Duncan of the Revolutions podcast Mia Wong joining me on

this interview. Welcome to the show, Mike, Thank you very much for having me. So let's talk about this because you know, I've kept up and been listen listening to Revolutions for years, and I started seeing messages earlier this year that, like Mike Duncan is doing this fictional revolution podcast on the Martian Revolution, and it seems to map really really closely a lot of stuff that's happening right

now in the United States. And I'm wondering, kind of to what extent did you anticipate that being an initial reaction to this when you started really finally laying down like the text for these episodes.

about it, man, We're just here. It's just going.

ideas that I wanted to do. You know, I wanted it to be like a monopoly corporation, because I also wanted to do some like social commentary and like what are the issues that we're kind of dealing with right now? And you know, and then I'm like, Okay, then there's this thing called the New Protocols that is going to you know, help jump start the revolution. And this is somebody coming in and just you know, implementing whole new software programs and hardware programs without any care for like

what it does to people. Then there's mass layoffs that are a part of this. And then deportations are you know, like all a part of the story of how the Martian Revolution gets going. And you know, this stuff was plotted out in October. And I got to tell you, you know, maybe I was naive, maybe I had my head in the sand. I thought she was gonna win yeah, man, Like I thought Harris was gonna win the election. That's where I that's where my head was at in September

and October, going into November. I was like, it'll be close. Of course it will. It's a toss up, but I think she'll pull it out in the end. It sure feels like it because they were running a terrible campaign and like they didn't have any field operations, and like the whole thing just kind of seemed like she was going to win. So for Trump to win and then start doing all of these things that were just supposed

to be fictional plot points, Oh they were references. Yeah, Like now I'm just like Jesus Christ, this this is terrible.

studying and working in that field for their entire lives, and he just starts changing everything based on his whims. Now, you don't have him staying up until four in the morning on ketamine benders and then tweeting out his ideas for how to change the government. But I guess I'd say, like that's the one the one thing that doesn't map onto right now. And I think this is this almost just goes inherently with the act of crafting fiction. Even your bad guys are a lot more sympathetic than our

current ones. Yeah, which I think is to your credit.

But like I've enjoyed the degree to which the decisions that are being made that are kind of making this Martian Revolution inevitable are the kind of decisions that you make when you've been raised in these sorts of bubbles where you were expected to just sort of be able to run things, because like that's the that's the strata that you come from, and it maps directly to like what we're seeing right now with these Silicon Valley guys who have spent the last few decades getting impossible amounts

of money and having that convinced them that they know how to do everything, but it also maps back to like Versailles.

was a good husband and father. Yes, it's it's obviously not. It's obviously not Elan Musk because he loves his kids. He's allowed to be in the same room as all of them. Yeah yeah, and they like they get along

great and everything. Yeah, so obviously it's not. But honest to God, like it wasn't meant to be just must but it was meant to be those tech guys, right, Like this is meant to be thinking about the guys who come in and they're like, we're gonna we're gonna move fast and break things right, and then what they break is like one hundred and twenty years of like labor law, and that's the only thing that is actually being broken here, like this is what you know what

uber is, and all of those kinds of like all of that stuff that came at us in the last like ten or fifteen years. And they think that yes, because they can code well, or because they have this one ability to like you know, market something in an effective way, that that means that they are brilliant and can do everything and everywhere for everybody, and like we're going to reinvent this and we're going to reinvent that. But they have no idea what they're doing or what

they're talking about. And you run into these people on Twitter all the time, this phenomenon of people being good in one area, yes, and then becoming sort of all purpose general knowledge experts when it's like you don't have any idea what you're talking about. And so the line there's a line that's in there where it's like we're Werner. The way that he thought is I'm smart, Therefore the ideas I have must be smart. Yes, And that is something that's not about Musk. That's about like just people

I run into on Twitter all the time. That's a phenomena that's a generalizable phenomenon.

This must mean I know how to replace medicare, right, yep. And it's this kind of like reasoning from first principles without ever actually like having to sit face to face with the consequences of your decisions. And I think you do a great job of showing how that cascades into a calamity and in a way that feels very realistic, even though we're talking about Mars and there's also like gravity generators in the life.

going to be run through Twitter, right. And one of Timothy Werner's things is the centralization of all decision making and the centralization of really everything. And in his mind, it would be more efficient if the company just had one brain and that was his brain, and every decision is made by the one brain. And so he's got all this stuff and he's got to make all these decisions.

Except that is that's crazy. That is not actually how you can run anything, and it just creates all this like basically everybody, I forget if I wrote this in I know, I definitely did that. Like the dreaded like request pending screen that YE started getting. They would submit, they would submit stuff like a fuel requisition order, and it would say request pending, and like request pending would never go away, it would just that's what it would say.

And then you look at what they're doing now and that they are trying to centralize everything that it's you know, it's a generalized authoritarian power grab. But you know they are, they are doing these things. Yeah.

Like one of the reasons the French Revolution happened is because Louis's son died like on the eve of the Estates General, and he was just not there because his son had just died. That's a real thing that happened. And the other stuff is like that sort of centralization of power is a lot like what I was trying

to get at. There was actually, like the reforms that went in for the European colonial powers after the Seven Years War in the Anglo colonies and the Spanish colonies and the French colonies, all of those governments sort of undertook a reorganization of their colonial structures after the Seven Years War. It kind of like reshuffled who had what territory, and all of those moves were about sort of an

in increasing presence of the metropol in colonial life. And this is what triggers, you know, the American Revolution, because there was going to be like two more customs officials in Boston Harbor and so like we went into refolt about this. Yeah, but this is also true of like

the Bourbon reforms in Spanish America. Is that kind of like centralization of a community of colonies that had grown very used to managing their own affairs, and so they're coming in and saying, well, yeah, this is ours and we here on Earth should be making these decisions for you Martians, and the Martians were like, well, we've been making these decisions for ourselves for like seventy years now.

That's where that stuff is coming from. And then history is always the place that I can point to and then I have to watch it also on the TV.

This is just stuff that happens all the time, right, because people don't learn the maactory as a rule, Like, no one's ever learned a lesson from history. Is the thing I've kept repeating to people over the last few years as I continue to fail to learn lessons from history.

it'll be more efficient. And when I was writing it, it was originally supposed to be like a kind of a more dramatic ten percent across the board layoff, And as I got closer to actually trying to type that up and write it down, I was like, this doesn't actually feel believable to me, Like people are going to really push back, and I mean this sincerely, like people are going to push back that nobody would be so stupid as to just across the board to a ten

percent layoff of something so critical, as you know, Mars is to Earth, because in the story, Mars is absolutely critical to how Earth is able to function with the

resource that they're able to get from there. And so I changed it around and actually look to like the sullen prescriptions from Roman history to kind of give it a different take where really it was like you woke up every day and there was like fifteen more names on the list, one hundred more names on the list, and there was something equally sort of dramatic and cool about that without this like unbelievable, you know, ten percent across the board cut And I wrote a paragraph in

there being like I know that people are going to think that this is like unrealistic, but you just have to understand that, like throughout history we have seen these things, like people do stupid stuff and they stubbornly cling to it all the time because that is something that happens,

and life as we know it is actually less. Like if I wrote up what was happening right now, like if I was just got like a window into an alternate world and we're living in a different world where Trump loss and I brought all this stuff back, there'd be like this is implausible, Like this is crazy. They would never be allowed to get away with that. They

would never be allowed to do that. They would never be so stupid as to blow up the global economy with a bunch of tariffs that make no sense to anyone.

single day because the peasants are always discontented. Right, So what it takes to really have a revolution is for somebody in power to be kind of incompetent and to start doing stupid things that allow the situation to get out of hand and on top of that, really piss off the other elites around them, because it's the mismanagement of the state that allows the elites that are kind of necessary for a full blown revolution, Like you need their resources, and you need their money, and you need

them being close to a position of power to be able to pop whoever's in there at the time. And you've got to be pretty in competent to like wreck an elite consensus, right, Like that's that is in and of itself catastrophically stupid if you're trying to stay in power. Yeah, and so yes, the great idiot theory is getting quite a workout lately.

get out of his control. But can you talk a bit more about sort of the role of these sort of like elite defections and how they end up sort of funding and enabling these revolutionary movements.

like philanthropic you know, enterprises to help Martians. Like that's a lot of philip a galatae like straight up, Like that's what the Duke Doorleon was doing in you know, seventeen eighty six, eighty seven, and eighty nine. And so that's the role that she's playing. But you know, if the elites are unified, it is very difficult for any kind of like peasant or worker uprising to actually get

traction and succeed in overthrowing the state. Like peasant insurrections have happened throughout history without any sort of elite support. They have often accomplished great things. But when you think about the great revolutions in history, there really have always been people in the inner corridors of power who are ready to get rid of whoever the sovereign is in

that moment. And you know, you can advance all the way to the Russian Revolution, and this is you know, this is the prototypical like the workers have risen up and the army is mutinying, and it is the people who overthrow this are and what that story misses is all of the people, even inside the Romanov family itself, who are like so fed up with what Nicholas and Alexander are doing that they're just like, we don't know

what to do anymore. But like he's, yeah, I guess he's got to go, you know, Like we can't get him to see reason, we can't get him to change course, we can't get him to do anything. Like the situation is completely out of hand and without those people leaning on Nicholas to force his abdication and also to say like, we're not going to back you up. If you try to bring the hammer down on all these people, then that's when sovereigns are actually overthrown.

the realities on the ground that made it possible. I think one of my favorite examples is the quote that like you can't dismantle the master's house with the master's tools.

We need divisions inside the ruling class. That doesn't mean you have to say and what those people want out of overthrowing the czar is what we want and what we're going to accept, right you know, obviously, like the cousins of the of Zar Nicholas and the people who are in those inner circles of power, they wanted him out of there just so they could run the empire a little bit better. They were frustrated with how poorly

the empire was being run. They didn't want a social revolution, but if you're going to take down that whole system, creating a destabilization event at the very top is necessary. But you don't have to support the ultimate aims of

those people. It's just it's an ingredient. And this is and you see this in the course of revolutions, and you see this in nineteen seventeen, You see this seventeen eighty nine, and then seventeen ninety two, where there is that first wave of sort of revolution that overthrows the sovereign, and then there is a second wave that overthrows the people who did it first. And so you know, you can hold out hope for you know, getting the job done without thinking that elites do play some role in all.

And that's just something that I don't know, it feels very prescients in ways, even though it was written out before a lot of this stuff happens.

And we did all of this, you know, we did the worst of the horrors with Trump, right, Like obviously that is on my mind with you know, with family separations and putting people in camps and abusing people and rounding people up, like all of this stuff which happened under Trump, Yes, but it also happened under Obama for eight years, and it happened for another four years under Biden. It's just that we kind of stopped talking about it

because it wasn't Trump who was doing it. And there is a through line of cruelty inside of this system towards immigrants, So that issue of deportation and like rounding people up and evicting them, especially those who have lived in this place their entire life. Like that's one of the points that I make, Like the people who are

being fired are like born and raised on Mars. Like one of the main characters, Alexandra Clare, she is a fourth generation Martian and she just gets caught up in these like stupid layoffs that Timothy Werner is pushing through. And now the only choice that she has is to either hide or get deported to Saturn where and nobody's ever come back from Saturn. We have no idea what happens on Saturn, because all they know is that nobody

ever comes back from Saturn. And this is a thing like taking people who have born and raised in America. This is the only place that they have ever known, right even if they came here when they were like one, like okay, born here, but like they here since they were one, and then you're like, okay, we're going to send you back to Mexico. They're not from Mexico. They don't know anybody in Mexico. They don't probably even speak Spanish half the time, you know, And doing this to

people is cruel. It is unconscionable what we do to people. And so yeah, like so when I was thinking to myself, Okay, I'm all right, this like fictional revolution and it's going to be on Mars. What are some of the things

that I want to do that will make the revolution happen? Yeah, some of this does is like a little bit of like this is these are Mike's political interests and the deportation issue, and trying to highlight the horror of the deportation issue and laud those who would hide those people

and help those people and bring those people food. Like the bravest people going are the ones who like go out and leave you know, water jugs out in the middle of the desert so people don't die, right, And the cruelest thing is these guys who go out and then break those knowing that people are going to knowing that people are going to like die of dehydration and die of starva, but just not care because they don't care about those people.

And you know what's really happened if you look at it, is we've kind of recreated in a decentralized form the eindset Skrupa, right, like, instead of having a centralized state having to raise these organizations that are going to be carrying out this kind of violence. Like it's it's largely become something that vigilantes have gotten into on their own as part of like just their's special interest in hurting people at scale. And it's it's such a uniquely it's

so uniquely tied to like this American individualism. It's such a uniquely sick thing about the way things work here that that's happening, Like that wouldn't have happened, not that Germany is you know that German culture in the thirties was better, but it wouldn't have happened because it was a different kind of culture.

sort of where we're at now. But this has been an ongoing thing for twenty years, across both parties and both administrations, and nothing really has like sort of churned my stomach more since Trump got elected than all of the Democrats and people doing like sort of post mortems on the election and being like, well, you know, we really should be tougher on the border, and we really should sort of like buy into this framing that there is this like invasion and we just need to do

border enforcement better. Like and they're then even moving and positioning themselves to a place where it's like Trump's not even doing a good job protecting the border, and like there was somebody I forget even who it was, but somebody one of them senators like tweeted, you know, this time last year, Biden had deported this many people and

Trump isn't even deporting that many people. And he was like trying to make this point that like Trump wasn't following through on his promises or something was like do you even hear yourself? Like, do you even hear yourself? Yeah? Yeah, it really is. And I can't you know, stomach the fact that Democrats are are going to take away from all this that the American people love cruelty towards immigrants

and that that we need to lean into that. Yes, And then you see the polls before all the tariffs stuff and all this stuff is going on, and he Trump is still sitting at like fifty percent approval, and it's like, I don't maybe they're right, Maybe the American people really do just love this.

to the desert. Like our coworker James, spent a lot of time during the Biden administration like at these I mean just like the open air prisons they built in the middle of the fucking desert, like on the border, and you know, and like like one of the stories that he covered extensively was that like probably most of these people would have died if it wasn't for like literally border volunteers like passing food and water to the bars.

And that's something that I was thinking about a lot, looking at the mutual aid networks and looking at the kind of mutual aid networks that trans people are building up right now, and like, I mean, I okay, like there's I mean, there's always been a million mutual aid networks because it's just impossible to survive if you're trans without like getting stuff from other trans people.

American culture. It's the thing that continually sends me into the darkest spirals is because there's there's no fixing the fundamental underlying problems without fixing that.

that was going on that the Martians were creating. And I can't quite get into this, but there is a song that I've got like half written called the Ballad of Lonely Joe, which is like a it's like a Martian folk song about lonely Joe who went off and tried to like do it himself, but and then he never comes back and now lonely Joe like wanders the red sands of Mars because like he tried to go out and not do it like with the group and not do it with the community, because you can't survive

alone on Mars. Yeah, but to your other point, Like, one of the things that I definitely wrote into the show is that everybody on Mars has a skin chip in their hand, and the skinship in their hand is what opens door. It like literally opens doors, and it gives them access to the Commissary, and it gives them access to restaurants, it gives them access to food and employment.

Like everything goes through that skinship. And when the people get fired by Werner, their skin chips just get turned off effectively, and it doesn't it doesn't open doors anymore. They can't get food anymore. They are living inside of

a society that they literally cannot interact with anymore. And so it took other Martians around them, and so there's a thing in the show called the no Doors movement, which is Martians jamming open doors so that the people who have they were called the annulled because their contracts were annulled. Yeah, but so so that the annulled could

get from here to there without needing their skin chip. Yeah, those are the kinds of things that you know are are necessary, and those are the kinds of things that are going to protect people. And I hope that those things are going on out there, and I hope that none of us publicly state right now what we may or may not be doing that front. Yeah, let's just go ahead and keep that words at.

Eat Us, which is about these indigenous bolivion Tins. And one of the things that I always struck me about that was, you know, like because they're all they're all literally like sleeping next to each other, like in these rooms, you can literally hear like the stomach of like the child next to you, like rumbling at night because I don't have enough food, and that like turns them into like one of the most militant sort of like working class.

I mean, for like a hundred years they are like like they're syndicalists and then their communists and like they're they're one of those Miltont things. And I, I don't know, it's it's interesting to me that that this is like this aspect of the society that that you've you know, you've sort of drawn out of of these historical revolutions where a key element of it again is is this

sort of collectivity. And also there's this like if you look at like the trajectory of like the modern American state and like the modern just the modern development of capitalism, it's been specifically trying to make that stuff not happen by like kicking people into suburbs and like trying to physically alienate people. And I was, I don't know, I was wonder how much you were sort of thinking about that kind of stuff when you were like writing the cultural aspects of this.

And like when you go back, because this is something that comes out of sort of like I study a lot of like political theory in school and those state of nature sort of works, you know, these thought experiments that like Thomas Paine would do or Rousseau would do, and you know it's like, how did we come together?

Why did we come together? Well, let's first imagine like an individual human wandering through the forest and like they encounter another one, so they come together for defense and they come together, you know, to share food and do some division of labor. And it's like, no, there's no such thing as a human wandering alone. That's not a thing.

Like any outgrowth that comes from our description of what human society is, like, whether it's defense or the division of labor, begins with the fact that we are already a group. There is a mother, there is a child, there is a father, there, there are aunts and uncles and others, like whatever the group is there, we are always doing this as a group. And hyper individualization and hyper adamization of our society is something that is trying to undo one of the most fundamental parts of what

it means to be human. This is something that I thought about a lot too, because when I started having kids, and you know, I have two kids, and the model for like having a family at this point is like you have a mother, a father or whatever, you have kids, but the point being that they are a unit that is unto itself, and they live in their own house, and they have to supply their own food, and they are in charge of getting their own money, and everything

that happens is just up to that little nuclear family. And the nuclear family is not really how we've ever done it before. Now. There's always been a broad network, a broad fad family friend network that has been a part of you know, raising our kids and having our families. And you know, if something bad happens, we don't just say, oh wow, bad luck for them. You know, you support that person. Yeah, And that is something that we've really gotten away from as a society.

there are families. Right, this is a directed change. And I'm not saying this in like the conspiratorial since I'm saying this a a This is what a lot of people, a lot of the worst people in our society believe because it's convenient for them, and they have pushed to make that belief more common and done so by funding think tanks and funding media organizations.

some kind of collective because again, you literally you can't just like leave it, leave a baby like out in the woods.

it out. He's writing this in like the eighteen forties and eighteen fifties, and he straight up says that like what liberal capitalism is doing, which he was himself. I mean, he's a conservative liberal. Like it's not like he's on the left or anything, but he's he's watching as the atomization of families and individuals is happening, and He's like, and that's how that's what tyranny thrives on. Tyranny thrives when everybody is disconnected from everybody else and everybody is

in competition with everybody else. Because that's the other key part of it is your family is now pitted against every other family in terms of like getting money, getting jobs, like getting that, getting this other thing. Like we're all scrambling out there in a competition to get a little bit more, a little bit better, or just you know,

have enough. Like I feel this every time I have to sign the kids up for like summer camp, you know, like I'm at war with every other family in the neighborhood because I'm just trying to get my kid into this camp and some people aren't gonna make it and other people will, and you got to be there, and you gotta have strategies about when to log onto the thing, like because they because they they're pitting us against each other like all the time, in all those little subtle ways.

people against each other. And yet anyways, somehow they you know, even even if it is by accident, which is to be fair, how a lot of revolutions start, they they do it.

I'm going to tie this back again to Tokefield, which the reason I would recommend Onnian regime is because that is a book about how much of the revolution was a continuation of what was going on before it and not actually caused by the revolutionary break And even if you believe in the revolution and believe it was this, I actually believe in the revolution because it accomplished these great things, but there was no year zero thing that happened. A lot of this stuff like is just on a continuum.

And you know, like I don't want to get in a fight with somebody about whether human nature is a thing that exists or doesn't exist, like like as an as an abs tract thing, because because I'm not sure that it's true, but there sure are a lot of things that keep popping up, right, Like we're interested in sex, and we have to eat food, and we live in shelters, and we make music, and there do there does seem to be some very like human qualities that exist across

all time and across all space. And if you just say to yourself, like, well, like I mean, this is one of the things. I'm very sympathetic to anarchists, but like there's a point with anarchism, like especially the early stuff, where their idea was that if you smash the state, and you destroy the state, then humans will be allowed to flourish in their natural goodness. And communalism, which is, you know a little bit what we are moving towards

right now. But I'm not sure even that exists, because if you if you crash the state out, it's not the state that's necessarily making us this way. There is there is stuff inside of human nature that's that we created the state to begin with. So the whole, the whole thing is like a very it's a balancing act that has gone way too far in So yeah.

You can make things better in some ways. But there's certain stuff that you're just never going to Like when I look at when I look at what the white supremacists want to do, right, well, you're never going to get people to stop mingling with other kinds of people.

from here to there and from there to here. And that is something that is going to happen no matter what, and especially if we're going into the twenty first century with all of its various climate disasters that are you know, facing us really and yeah, is going to make such Yeah, it's gonna it's gonna it's already making some places less habitable and other places will be more habitable. And what's going to happen is that people who are living in less habitable areas are going to want to go to

where there are areas that are still habitable. And so there there is there's going to be movements of people. And the question before us in the twenty first century is not you know, can we keep people in the places that they are now and you know, like sort of lock in rigidly to like these xenophobic nation states and that will actually stop those migrations from happening. Or do we open ourselves up to the idea that this is going to happen and simply make it more humane

and more more rational. That's the question. It's not whether the migrations will happen or not. It's simply how cruel they will be when they happen. And right now we are choosing maximum cruelty.

pretending it's otherwise. Like the That's one of the few things that does give me hope is that the people who are insistent upon pretending otherwise seem to be getting increasingly marginalized. I mean, we'll see Gavin Newsan still hasn't been sort of choked off of access to the public, but you know, the statements he's been making recently about

Abrego Garcia, it's just like, yeah, I just can't. I can't imagine this guy being the future of the Democratic Party if this is just looking at where popular discourse is right now.

say like, well, why do people come here, and you know, there's a kind of a standard American exceptionalist notion which is like, well, they come here because they want their because they want freedom and freedom is what America offers, and like the American dream and all that stuff, like the entrepreneurial spirit, et cetera, et cetera. But mostly it's because this is where you can come and get the world's money. Yeah, this is where it all is. It's

sitting in my pocket, it's sitting in your pocket. Right, we are the ones who have all of the world's money, and so that is why they are coming here. Yep. So you just have to like fit that in your brain. And what is happening is is this this constant division between like Americans being more important than anybody else, And I understand why that exists politically, and even these questions

are like citizens versus non citizens. Like one of the things that got me when I was reading Bakunin was like he had it was a throwaway line, It wasn't even like a point he was making, but he referred to something as mere citizenship, which kind of struck me because I grew up very liberal, Like I come from like the liberal suburbs of Seattle, and I had very liberal notions and citizenship, in sort of the liberal imagination is the highest thing that you can be, be a

citizen of a polity with rights, there's a constitution, you get to participate in the government. Like citizen and citizenship are these words that had great, profound meaning and really kind of like knock me sideways to have and be like mere citizenship. Right, You've been reduced to simply a part of a polity, and your humanity has been taken away from you. You're no longer being recognized as a

human being. You're being recognized as a citizen. And if you're not a citizen, then you just don't count at all. And it totally wipes out their humanity. So not only do I not have humanity because I'm simply a part of some polity rather than being me, Mike Duncan, a human being, but it's erasing our human obligations to each other, to non citizens and the idea like and you just see this very casually, like right now, like all over the place. It's just like they're not citizens, so they

don't deserve due process. They're not citizens, so we can just send them to El Salvadorian torture prisons and it's fine because they're not citizens and therefore they don't have rights. It's like what about you know, just being a person thinking about other people. And one of the greatest, one of my very favorite. I know I'm steamroll in here. I'll let you get a word in edgeways here in

a second. But the I forget what the court case was, but there was a court case out of Texas, you know, like back in like the sixties, when they decided that the Texas school districts had to open the schools to undocumented children. And they said that because it says in the Fourteenth Amendment persons, it doesn't say citizens. And they were arresting a lot of this on the notion that like it's it says person has these rights, not citizen

has these rights. And this is what conservatives and MAGA hate, hate hate, this is why they're going to try to undo the fourteenth Amendment. But to have the Supreme Court at one point in the past be like, no, you have to do this because you owe an obligation to them as a person, not just as a citizen, that's like mind blowing. I could not see the Supreme Court today making that same decision. But like, that's that's the kernel of something really good I think for the future

of humanity. Rather than like clinging to this like citizen or non citizen thing.

And it's the fight we've lost the worst as the left or you know, I should even say getting beyond left and right, because I really think those are not the most useful ways to look at things.

And if you look at the like the Liberation Day like turf tariff package, right, the single country that is the most fu from this is Sri Lanka yep. And if those tariffs go back into effect in like in like fifty days whatever, like eighty days, like, the entire country of Shri Lanka is fucked. They're doomed, They're completely fucked. And all of these countries, you know, all these countries need US dollars in order to like literally to buy

fucking fuel. And then suddenly, oh wait, hold on, you can't do experts of the US and like the entire this is something that affects literally the entire world.

think and feel and like act and like hurt in the same way. So we do, like that's only a thing that happens if you're a very specific kind of American citizen. And if you're not, or God help you, you were born in like most of the like the rest of the world, which is again it hitteous super majority of everyone on Earth. You just you don't matter, and.

otherwise it wouldn't be a very interesting story. And they're is a debate right now among the victorious Martian revolutionaries about who should count inside of the Martian constitution and this thing called the Republic of Mars that they have just declared they're no longer a part of a corporation. They're going to be this thing called the Republic of Mars. And there's a guy who is passionately committed to Mars and to the Martian people, and he hates earthlings and

he doesn't trust earthlings. And there's no reason for him to trust earthlings. They have tried to screw them over a bunch of times and it cause nothing but pain. And so, but there are a bunch of earth born Earthlings on Mars, and he wants to exclude them from the Republic of Mars. And if you're born on Mars, then you should get to participate. And if you're not, then you shouldn't have rights, you shouldn't be a part of this project. And I would love to just I

would love to deport you. That's what he's going to be arguing. And then there is another side that has a more universalist take on this, and my character Alexandra Clair, who is like a d class. She comes out of the warrens. She can just that's basically like the working class.

they are not suffering from the new protocols. Like and you know when during these revolutions, did they hold neutron guns in their hands and fight and die for Mars? Yeah? They did, And so probably we should say that it's

not Martian good, Earthling bad. But like, let's just open it up to everybody and we will sort out, like you know, who's you know, who's in on this and who's who's actually trying to undermine us, because you know there is there are loyalist fifth columnists that they are gonna have to deal with.

and I'll have to figure that out. And that's my weekly struggle these days.

daughter got a dog. And to all the parents that listen, you know when your child gets a pet, who's pet that actually is? So I find myself doing a lot more chores than I signed up for. But it's a pug, and it keeps trying to eat the cat's food. Therefore it's got liquid doodoo and I'm not a fan of that. And since I get to work in my pajamas because I'm just recording podcasts and rap music back here, seems to fall on me to scoop up this liquid doodoo.

But that's only when she eats the cat's food. Stupid dog, eat your own food. Anyway, I'm here to talk about something that you can do nothing about.

take care of this land. I'm gonna include myself, even though I am not the invasive colonizer. But there are really only nine native trees to California, two of which are not the palm tree or the eucalyptus. The plants that are here naturally are drought resistant and fire resistant.

all neighbors houses burning will pay any amount. There was another click of Rick Caruso, who almost in a multiverse situation, is our mayor, a billionaire developer who owns the Grove on the West Side. Just that if you ever watched TMZ, whenever somebody's walking out of a place, it's probably at

the grove and was a you know, real estate magnate. Anyway, there are videos of him driving through an area that he had with his private security and private firefighters where it's smoke billowing all around the place, but his situation was fine. Why because he had private firefighters. They shaved his shopping center, but he tried to unsuccessfully save nearby homes as well, which reminded everybody about the time that Kanye and Kim tweeted about their house being saved by fired fighters.

What is happening right now? Which is basically what happened and how most of the regulars felt. So this episode is not just about private fire departments, because that would not be a very interesting full episode. It's about the question that private fire departments bring up, which is like nigga, whose water is that?

already happened here, y'all. Let's go all right, this may or may not be a shock to y'all. I know in the first the block is literally hot episode I did way way, way way back when I first joined Wellkools on media first launch, when I first joined the team, my first episodes, it was one of those things where it's like the thought has probably never crossed your mind, and and some of it's like sitting I'm talking to

y'all who pay bills. Some of this stuff is sitting right up under your nose, Like Southern California Medicine is one of our power companies. But then there's PG and E. This isn't the City of Los Angeles providing this. That's a company. In the same way that your internet come from a company. What makes you think your power don't come from a company. And if your power come from a company and an internet come from a company, why

wouldn't your water come from a company? I like, well, I don't know what would make you think that that's just a city municipality. Well, because duh, because water fall from the sky.

It is paying the company back the money that the company paid your city to get this gig. Let me back up here first, let me cover the private fire departments. Now here's the thing. Private fire departments usually are hired by insurance companies. So what they do a lot of time is like prevention. They'll come in here and you know, clear out shrub, make sure that your house is not

like set up for failure. You know. In California, I mean, people always talk about our strict laws and building codes, and it's like, well, nigga, do you see why every time you got a bureaucratic law, like there might be a historical evidence as to why we need that, one of which is my nigga, California ain't got a lot of water. So if you're gonna build a house, you can't just have dry shrubbery up around your house. Why because you just basically put a box of matches just

around your house. So yes, bam, like that's why you can't do that.

your h VAC is good. And usually they got their own little tank right, So they come in with their own little tank of water that stay private water that basically they bring in their bottle water, you know what I'm saying, while the rest of us is using tap right, But eventually that little tank go run out. You feel me and then at that point you got to tap

into the fire hydrant. Right now, what most of these companies will say is, like the guys were not monsters, dude, Like, if if the neighborhood is on fire, of course we're going to help. What do you like, what are you talking about? Which I truly believe for this reason. If I'm paying to protect this house, but the neighbor's house is on fire, that probably means that the neighbor's house is going to cause my house to catch on fire.

So of course it would be in my best interest to help put that one out.

right now. A lot of those are like wildlife suppression. Now, there's such thing as called the National Wildlife Suppression Association, which represents more than like three hundred private firefighting groups, and a lot of them work more as like government contractors, right as far as like again supplement for like wildfires, right and like I said, the others are hired by private companies. Yo, and peak this like a little two person private firefighting crew with a small vehicle.

and run off some statistics to you. I just want to go ahead and add to the dystopia that we live in because we need to say, we need to change the name of this show too.

four percent over the decade in the nineteen nineties. Right, so what that means is almost half of y'all are paying a private company for your water. Now, let's make some distinctions here between public utilities and private utilities. And you know what are we even talking about. So public utilities are owned and operated by your local, state, and federal governments on behalf of the citizens and customers in

that area. So a public utility would be your municipal water, sewage, sanitation services, like if you have a public electricity providers, government, government ran public transit systems, state owned telecommunication companies, public utilities.

I'm not trying to make money off it. I'm trying to keep the lights on, right, But as we know, it costs to do those things, so the temptation becomes easy to be like, how do I offload this cost right and make sure that this service is there? Because as you know, oftentimes public utilities don't be very good. You know what I'm saying. Flint still ain't got fresh

water right now. Altadena is in a situation where they was like, look, don't even boil the water, like whatever coming out of your tap is just not good.

shareholders while also delivering reliable service. Now, they argument their defense would be if we don't give you a good product, we won't have customers, So it is in our best interests for our own money to give you a best service. However, are you seeing the truck size hole in their logic? Nigga, we don't have a choice. Do you have a choice as to what water company provides the water to your house? Who go run the sewer? I don't have an option anyway. So the key differences are very obvious.

who the hell is so cal Gas? They was like that's who that's who else gonna give me the gap? I don't have no options. Oh, I got to live in La. These this is who serves LA infrastructure spending. With public utilities, they might find it easier to raise funds for long term capital projects and maintain infrastructure proactively, while privately owned businesses and utilities answered to share seeking returns,

which impact investment decisions. Meaning if I'm like, yo, somebody gotta clean this sewer pipe because this water ain't good in this neighborhood, it would behoove the city of Los Angeles to fix this, and it would be easy for them because I am a Los Angeles resident.

I mean, I don't know what else I need to explain to y'all. Right, now, let me show you how this works and what the allure is for a public city council to make this decision. Are y'all here to more perfect union? It's another one of those podcast folks that just got more money than us. They're able to produce things that we had bread we would produce it anyway.

They did one about investor own water companies and how they lobby to give them the contract to run their sewage and water, right, And it's a super dope stuff. It's a super dope study. It's a good, like focused study to show like as sort of an example of how it could happen anywhere. And they focused this one study on this city in Pennsylvania, right. And here's the ill part about all of this is that how would you know this is happening?

But if one day your bill triple, I mean, who do you call you? Like, I haven't used more water. I don't understand why it costs more. Now you might call the city the city like, oh, we don't even run the water no more.

All you gotta do when people call complaining about they water is just say please hold and transferred to us. You ain't got nothing to worry about it. And the city say, okay, that sounds good. Now are you going you're gonna change your prices? It's like, why would we change our prices. We won't need to change our price. Matter of fact, we can probably charge less because we ain't got the same things y'all got, well, at least

for the first few years. Kind of like the phone bill when they like, oh, you sign up for this much money a month for the first three months. Are your cable for the first first two years, and then one day, your cable bill come in and it's just psycho and you like, I don't know why to hell this costs so much more. And they're like, oh, yeah, the contract was for this long and then after that it went back to regular price. That's essentially what's happening.

That's why I was like, if your water bill go crazy, who you're gonna call? Like what you gonna say?

Pennsylvania was Act twelve, which was in twenty sixteen. And the concern is cities feel like they can't keep up with dunt dunt dun environmental laws and keep up with city growth. Cities are growing so fast, so many people are moving in, We're destroying the Earth at a particular exponential rate, and the government wants us to not destroy the planet.

you you paying the company? What do I mean by that? The company cuts cuts the city at check. Now the company gotta make their money back. How they make their money back? Nigga, your bills?

the City of Philadelphia. Chester Water Authority is like, my jig, I mean, what the hell you want us to do? How does this stuff become legal? Well, like saying, way any other stick come legal? They just you lobby candidates all the time. And the only way to stop this is you got to sign up to some sort of city council news led us something to be able to walk up in there and protest the shit. Nigga, good luck.

Now let's talk about specifically California. All right, I bring up specifically California because of all this stuff about the fire,

hydrants and water issues that we had recently. Remember that the water that water's Los Angeles comes from the north right, It comes from right up under Sacramento through the California Aqueduct that was put together by this man named maulhulland so the mulhulland passed mulhulland drive that was all based on this man that made Los Angeles be possible because he just went up there just like any other colonizing was like a buy your water, and they was like water ain't for sale.

bring water to Los Angeles. Now, Los Angeles did have one river, that was the San Gabril River that starts in the top of the San Gabriel Foothills and comes into what we call the La River, which is paved, which there is a movement to unpave that because that would probably help us with a lot of climate issues.

But either way, that was an actual river. It was enough to support the native tribes here because it wasn't that many people here and they had sense enough to not plants that need the water that they ain't got. They wasn't trying to build a city in the area. They ain't supposed to be a city. Nigga, Have you ever been to Las Vegas. There should not be a city there. Y'all ever been to the Inland Empire? There should not be that many humans there. According to the Earth,

unless you pump water over there. The natives were fine the indigenous communities figured out how to live in the shit for thousands of years, but you know, we had to do our thing. Now some vocabulary. California got a thing called senior water rights, which means whoever got there first gets the water, Like basically, it's my land, di licted right. But they only got them rights when it started from the gold Rush. So they was like, well, who was there first? Was this white man?

California's groundwater basins combined can hold more than five hundred and sixty six times as much water, with a storage capacity of eight hundred and fifty million to one point three billion acres of feet across the California Department of Water Sources. The state's surface resources hold more than forty million acres On top of that. So there's two types

of water here. There's surface water and there's groundwater. Groundwater obviously that's stuff that you would dig in for a well, that's a whole other thing.

to the roots of Resinic's pistachios, almonds, pomegranate orchards. Specifically, it's stored in the Kerrent Water Bank that is the most valuable water resource in the region and critical to America's fresh flood supplies. The water bank, which is watch This the bank itself a public private partnership with the Resnic's owned fifty seven percent of the steak is thirty two square mile recharge basin, which looks like floodlands from the street that essentially stores again the one point five

million acre feet of water five hundred billion gallons. The resins storage arrangement is very controversial.

deep social divides. Somebody bought the water, but water isn't the only thing, like I said, as somebody else owes, you know. According to Publicpower dot Org, utilities that were sold since nineteen eighty have ranged dramatically in size. Although many had a small number of customers at the time of the sale, with the median of fewer than six hundred customers, less than thirty percent of utilities sold had

more than a thousand customers at the time of sale. Right, so back then it was a small amount of people.

Other utilities substantial size include those serving the cities of Vero Beach, Anchorage, Alaska, Eagle Mountain, Utah, and all together we are talking about eight hundred thousand citizens today have their electricity. Private sales have occurred in twenty six states, and almost all of Kansas was sold, and it was sold in the nineteen eighties. Now, why even make an episode on this? And it's because of this last thing. Corporate cities. Now, of course, company towns is as old

as companies are. You know, you had trained things and stuff like that, you know, where like a company moves in and it just it just made sense for the company to make sure that they were providing housing and you know, saloons and stuff like that for the people that you know, lived.

right near Walt Disney World. Elon Musk is building his city called in snail Brook outside of Austin, Texas for employees of his constellations of startups, including SpaceX, Tesla, and Boeing, but the most ambitious is California Forever. It's supposed to be Silicon Valley two point zero. It's this group ran by the former Golden Sacks trader Jane Samark and is backed by investors like the Lincoln co founder Reed hofsman

Chris Dixon, and this philanthropist name Loreene Powell. And it plans to create this new city in Solano County, sixty miles north of San Bernardino, with tens of thousands of homes, large solar energy orchards, with a million new trees, and one hundred thousand acres of new park space. And they hope to build this community will generate thousands of jobs in a wockable Paris or West village in New York.

this is what we're doing. We building freeways.

This episode is also about the people in government who categorize and classify want to be terrorists, who want the country to collapse faster, and what these changes in categorization methods can tell us about the future of the country. I'm Garrison Davison today I'm joined by a very special guest, philosophing comedian Michael Burns of the YouTube channel Michael o'burns and formerly wiscrack rip. How you doing.

we will, we will get into this. Do you want to give like a philosophy one oh one definition of nihilism? A super well known and universally agreed upon term that always means the same thing to everybody.

culture influenced by idealist philosophy, creates nihilism. The reason he says it creates nihilism is because people care more about Heaven than they do about earth. They care more about the life they're going to have an eternity than the life they have in the here and now. So for him, it's like this devaluement of life that happens if your Christianity.

More broadly speaking, nihilism has a I guess more positive usage, which is the you know, disbelief in the inherent or necessary meaning in an overarching.

you know. And of course in that movie, nihilism is represented by a crew of I think Austrian techno producers called Autobond, who are also nihilists, and they say throughout the film like we are nihilists, we believe in nothing, which is a really and obviously the Coen Brothers made that film, at least one of them was a philosophy major,

so they know what they're doing. That's kind of the really basic, not good enough version of this thing that it seems like the FBI is operating with like people who don't believe in the goodness of the Western project.

twenty five. Nihilist violent extremists are individuals who engage in criminal conduct within the United States and abroad in furtherance of political, social, religious goals that derive primarily from a hatred of societ at large and a desire to bring about its collapse by sowing indiscriminate chaos, destruction, and social instability. Nihlis violent extremists work individually or as a part of a network with these goals of destroying civilized society through

the corruption and exploitation of vulnerable populations, which often include miners. Now, this is where it's going to get into some kind of weirder stuff that we will kind of explain later. They have like a second definition here quote Nihilistic violence streamists, both individually and as a network, systematically and methodically target

vulnerable populations across the United States and the globe. They frequently use social media communication platforms to connect with individuals and desensitize them to violence, among other things, breaking down societal norms regarding engagement violence, normalizing the possession, production, and sharing of gore materials, and otherwise corrupting and grooming those

individuals towards committing future acts of violence unquote. And that kind of outlines some of the strategy of these groups, the groups that they're kind of gonna mention here. I've been doing like freelance research on for about four years now.

I've been trying to publish a few articles on these guys over the years, but it's always it's always tricky, and we will get to kind of the darker corners of that in a sec But let's let's first kind of talk about what this new term, this nvees nihilist violent extremists, What this is kind of replacing in the in the FBI lexicon. Now, it seems that that this term is being used in place of two previous FBI terrorism categories. This is from a November twenty twenty FBI bulletin.

Quote anti government or anti authority violent extremism. This threat encompasses the potentially unlawful use or threat of force or violence in furtherance of ideological agendas derived from anti government or anti authority sentiment, including opposition to perceived economic, social, or racial hierarchies, or perceived government overreach, negligence, or illegitimacy.

at these structures of belief in the world. So rather than being like motivated by hatred or love or fear or whatever, a more classically nihilists few is just again like, oh, I've been sold a bill of goods on what the meaning of existences or what the undermining underlying principles of political reality are, And now I see that they are maybe bs.

racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism. Right, this is like your what term assists your neo Nazis. The FBI defines it as quote. This threatning compasses the potentially unlawful use or threat of force or violence and furtherance of ideological agendas derived from bias, often relating to race or ethnicity held by the actor against others or a given population group.

Racially or ethnically motivated boid extreamists purported to use both political and religious justifications to support their racially or ethnically based ideological objectives and criminal activities. This was the group that saw like a massive, a massive explosion and growth the past ten years, really starting around twenty sixteen to twenty seventeen, with you know, the neo Nazi mass shooting like epidemic, especially around like twenty seventeen to twenty nineteen.

This is the most lethal group and it grew exponentially during that period, and we're kind of seeing some of these groups start to reform now. Now there's been some reporting that this that this anti government or anti authority violent extremism, which I'm just going to say AGAVE, which is the acronym which does make me a little bit

hungry for a glucose syrup. That it's fine. Now, there's been some reporting that state agave is specifically like a Biden era term, but it actually like predates the Biden presidency and was in use under Trump. In fact, a lot of the internal FBI reforms that are being reported on right now are actually undoing changes and counter terrorism strategies that started under the first Trump presidency. But we'll

get more on that later. We're gonna go on an ad break real quick and return to talk about a gruesome act of violence in Wisconsin last month.

especially through radicalizing US soldiers. At this point, they're pretty mythic with their writing and tactics, leaving a strong lingering presence across the left hand path fascist occult milli U. We also have a reference to quote unquote accelerationism here,

which kind of similar to nihilism. Is like this philosophical term which has kind of been like warped and changed VIA's people's application of it in politics, and specifically kind of the way that we're going to be using this word here is this idea of trying to like accelerate the collapse of the country, mostly to install like a white supremacistats in a state after the country has collapsed.

This is how most Nazis use the term even though it has a slightly different cultural background with the work of Nick Land and Fisher.

In other exchanges on TikTok, he shared information with a user named Nihilis about how to find Nazi telegram channels. I'm gonna I'm gonna read through some of this, some of this uh chat transcript Nihilis, Hey, dude, do you know any telegram groups where niners that's O nine A and drex can interact and exchange info? Awoken, that's Cassup. Sorry, No, I'm mostly in NSWP telegram groups. L ol. If you do find any, it'd be nice if you tell me. Nihilis,

what's WP? Awoke, Wikipedia dot org, slash national underscore, socialism underscore, white power, nilus oh, white power cool? Awoken? Do you know any on nine a telegram groups? Nihlis? Oh, not a group, but a channel. You can find documents there. Awoken? All right, send awoken? Can you send me the link to the account? Awoken, It says, I can't access the message, Nihlis, How can I do that? Wait a second, awoken? Here's

my telegram user name accelerationists fourteen. Nihlis. I sent a message, So there you go.

from quote unquote Jewish controlled politicians. The third page of the document contains images of Adolph Hitler with text that reads, quote Hail Hitler, Hail the White Race, Hail victory. Now, from what I can read it, this manifesto, it's pretty basic. It's heavily plagiarized, like most of these kind of white supremacist accelerationist manifestos are. It talks about how Jews control

white countries and are promoting white genocide and degeneracy. Talks about the need to quote unquote collapse Jewish occupied governments. The manifesto states that his motivation for wanting to kill Trump was to sow chaos and raise public awareness that quote assassinations at accelerating the collapse are possible things to do, unquote not that possible, since he's arrested and did not

accelerate the collapse. But he also advocates that people unable to commit to taking direct action instead make connections with other white supremacists and grow a network to take over

the country once America collapses. He recommends the writing of Nazi accelerationists, including James Mason, who wrote the influential Nazi book Siege, and the Terror gram Collective, a group of white premacists from around the world who organize on the messaging platform Telegram to share guides on how to do terrorism. He also recommends the writings of former Adam Waffen members, an American accelerationist group, writing quote, there's much to learn

from the successes and mistakes of Adam Waffin. I think it's worth noting that Adam Waffin was also either like infiltrated or partially co opted and inspired by some nine A teachings. This is kind of how the more bizarre and occultic influence of on nine A seeped more into the kind of general American accelerationist Nazi mill you this

was like in like twenty eighteen. Now, Cassip advises that if the reader of the manifesto is already like pilled, that you should just skip the theory and just read practical how to guides for terrorism and bomb making, since quote unquote, there is no political solution. Huge amounts of violence will be required long past the days where we can vote for a Hitler to save us. White revolution is the only solution, unquote, which is I guess I'm

kind of desensitized to this sort of stuff. In fact, I just find this slightly funny considering kind of the victory lap that like Steven Miller and like white nationalists are currently having in the government where many of them do think they can just vote for a Hitler to save us, and that Hitler may may already be in office forever.

altered in aesthetic multiple times. Frankly, if you spend enough time on Twitter now in the comments of blue Check Neo Nazis, you can find some some of these edits where they have like you know, like techno techno, like fast paced sometimes like Russian music set to like you know, glorified images of like like like Rome or Nazi Germany,

or a large variety of stuff. But the gore genre is specifically unique to kind of the to the oh nine to a like a culti Nazi branch, because they think that like viewing these images like increases your power level of like evil. Right, It's a very video game view of like of like spiritual development of like you have to you have to like raise your evil stat by looking at Gore and this will make you more able to commit like big acts of violence.

to a gun. He later told his classmate that he would befriend someone with a gun and then steal it, and told him that he was in contact with a male in Russia via telegram and that they were both plotting to overthrow the government of the United States and assassinate Resident Trump. Cassip told the classmate that when he saw ten consecutive attacks in the news, it would have to be him.

So yet not a very good attacker, I guess. But no, like this, this kid murder of his parents sat in the house with their decomposing bodies for twelve days before trying to carry out the rest of his attack on the United States. So yeah, though he did not succeed in his larger goals like these, these people still absolutely do get like groomed into doing violence. And this is something that happens at a pretty frequent basis, honestly, to the point where these types of things don't make giant

headlines anymore. They would have maybe in twenty seventeen, but now a lot of journalists are desensitized to this, and because it happens so frequently, it is less newsworthy, which is a very unfortunate place to be in for a country. Do you know what else is unfortunate? Michael?

like useful. Well, well, we'll learn something together. So at the end of this section of this complaint that attempts to describe Cassip's collapse driven political ideology is the appearance of this new term, nihilistic violent extremists right now. This was actually the second time this term has appeared in

court documents. The earliest appearance of this term was in a March sentencing memo for a child sexual abuse material case first filed in November of twenty twenty four, which was linked to the seven six four child extortion and exploitation network. Ken Kleppenstein, who first reported on the use of the nihilism term, missed this first appearance and attributed the origin to the cassup case. Michael, are you similarly unfortunate enough to be aware of seven six'?

instagram social media. Apps they're kind of inspired by some aspects OF oz NINE, a but they are much more focused on the production and district abution of child sexual abuse materials and trying to manipulate groom and like blackmail and extort miners into producing this. MATERIAL a lot of it's done by other miners, Too like a lot of this is teens targeting other teens with adults kind of

helping this process. Along it's a pretty big. Problem there's been some good reporting on it In wired And The guardian the past few, years if you want to read. More, now This march sentencing memo for the seven six four case describes seven six four and related groups as quote nihilist violent extremists who engage in criminal conduct within The

United states and engage with other extremists. Abroad the seven six to four Networks accelerationist goals include social unrest in the downfall of the current world, order including The United states. Government members of seven six four work in concert with one another towards a common purpose of destroying civilized society through the corruption and exploitation of vulnerable, populations including. Miners. Quote, NOW i think this this definition may be a bit to,

generalizing but it's not. Incorrect like, this this is correct in what the explicit goals of this group, are maybe not just every individual member of this. Group BUT i think it would be a mistake to kind of dismiss this definition as outlandishly, grandiose. Right it kind of it calls into like my you, know like conspiracy, theory like, framing because it sounds very like extravagant and, complicated and

it kind of, is but it's it's also like. Simple it's it's people trying to automate the process of producing and distributing illegal. Materials BUT i do believe it is a mistake to completely dismiss, this both in terms of like the government trying to ascribe political motive for the distribution of these, materials and also the ideological justifications held

by some members of these. Groups now there have been two more seven six four cases From april of twenty twenty five that have used the nihilist of violent extremism

designation in court. Documents, now part of kind of the struggle with this, is Like Ken kippenstein, reported, quote it sounds to me like some demented philosophical justification for just being a, pedophile and like it, Is but that doesn't mean the political motivations shouldn't be, discounted because those motivations impact how they, operate how these groups, spread which targets they, pick and other political actions members might, take like mass

shootings targeting racial, minorities TARGETING lgbtq. Individuals so, yeah this is kind of WHY i push back a little bit on this kind of dismissive tone towards this like, larger almost conspiratorial kind of matrix put onto groups like seven and six. Four, now part of the tricky thing with use of this new nihilism term is that it's being used to rope in a variety of horrific incidents under a singular nebulous. Category, Right so let's take the case

Of Cassip. Here Cass up that the guy who killed his parents in a plata collapse The United, states is a relatively bog standard like Neo nazi accelerationist with seemingly no direct ties to seven to six four activity besides an interest IN o NINE, a which was just one of the inspirations that influenced seven to sixty four as it evolved into its own complex machine about five years.

Ago But cassup openly admitted to being radicalized By nazism and the White power movement, online and yet in his criminal complaint contains an expanded version of the nihilist violent extremism, definition which is literally copy and pasted from a child sexual abuse material sentencing memo from five days. Before so they just used this same thing despite it not really. Applying reading. Quote individuals are targeted online often through synchronized group.

Chats nihilist of violent extremists frequently conduct coorinated extortions of individuals by blackmailing them so they comply with demands of the. Network these demands vary and, include but are not limited, to self mutilation online or in, person sexual, as harms to, animals, sex sexual exploitation of siblings and, others acts of, violence threats of, violence, suicide and. Murder so very very dark.

Stuff the definition goes on to state how Vulnerable india are targeted and members of the group attempt to gain notoriety throughout the network and spread fear among those targeted individuals for the purpose of accelerating the downfall of society and otherwise achieving the goal of nihilist violent. Extremists so while that does accurately describe groups like seven six, four

it doesn't really relate to the case Of. Cassup it's tricky because a lot of these seven and six four guys are Also, nazis and a lot Of nazis are also.

Pedophiles some of these guys start off as like evil occultic pedophiles who associate With nazism because it's a pretty universal symbol of, evil and sometimes it's the vice versa where they start off as like an antisemitic right, winger A nazi or A, fascist who then associate with this weird pedo occult stuff for a variety of reasons like, spiritual perverted pleasure or tactical network, building and usually usually

it's a, Mix klippenstein, writes. Quote the warrant Alleges cassip was in touch with The order Of Nine, angles A satanic Neo nazi group that spouses except, racism a fancy word for the belief that destabilizing the social order allows

for radical. Change that is pretty heady stuff to ascribe to a seventeen year old and ends up having the feeling of an episode of altered carbon, unquote AND i kind of like reject this dismissive, Framing, like, no these seventeen year olds are thinking about, This they are getting convinced of this material. Online that is the motivation for this isn't like a science fiction. Thing this is real

and it's pretty common among like extremists this. Age there's a lot of young teenage male extremists that's kind of their main, demographic and this type of stuff is popular like this is at least popular within this small group of. Extremists so, yeah it is a little bit, heady but this is what they are genuinely thinking about. It it's not incorrect to like ascribe that to. Them cassap openly admitted to this connection well.

to dismiss. THAT i can understand the impulse to be, like this just seems like a very, stupid evil teen. Kid, totally it seems just as. Plausible like you're pointing out that there could be an actual engagement with, ideas and it's important to recognize that because then you have to get at the root of that.

With though these individuals may be seen as like victims of nihilism and like like in like The nietzschean. Sense, now, like my main problem with the nihilist violent extremism term is that it's so depoliticized and like in a way

that's rife for political. Abuse this term can be used to cover what the government deems as violence stemming from like apathy from frustration with, society as well as like anti tech or anti civilization, politics and this is all coming from like top down at the New Federal bureau Of.

Investigation for, Years Cash bettel has closely associated WITH, QAnon has helped the legal defense campaigns For january sixth, insurrectionists which Included Proud, Boys ousekeepers since Three, percenters and now as head of THE, fbi he's INVESTIGATING fbi agents who worked Those january sixth. Cases Joe, kent the new director of The national Counter Terrorism, center has made media appearances

With Nick fuentes and Neo nazi YouTuber David. Carlson he Hired Proud boys to consult in his failed congressional, campaign and his friends With Patriot prayer Leader Joey. Gibson kent

has repeatedly called for THE fbi to INVESTIGATE. Antifa the co founder of The Global Project against And, Extremism Heidi, barrick has said That PATEL'S QAnon links And deputy Director Dan bongino's public conspiracism and bigotry make taking the threat of far right extremism quote unquote impossible for these two. Men she, says, QUOTE i think it makes it very unlikely that the far right will continue to be seen as the threat it actually is in terms of hate

crimes and domestic. Terrorism all of this marks a huge departure from the First trump, administration where THE fbi for the first time Declared White premacy the country's greatest domestic terrorism. Threat facts about violence and its perpetuators probably won't matter this time, around, Unquote and these changes are already taking. Place an old counter terrorism try guide was removed from

The White house website In. JANUARY a CURRENT fbi agent was quoted In Vanity fair as, saying, quote the key is The Domestic Intelligence Operations. Guide if they change, That patel will be able to shift domestic terrorism investigations away from the accelerationists and the right wing street fighters and

towards things LIKE blm And antifa. Unquote patel has cut The Domestic Terrorism office staffing and reassigned agents and intelligence, analysts with new SENIOR fbi officials reportedly considering to disband the Entire Domestic Terrorism operations. Section in, addition THE fbi has discontinued their previous Domestic Terrorism tracking, tool where they take relevant investigations to identify and track trends for terrorism

probes across the. Country sources for outlets Like reuters say that changes to the agency will reduce counter terrorism operations against far right and racially motivated extremists and. Militias Jacob, ware a domestic terrorism expert at The council On Foreign, relations Told, reuters, quote there is a broader, DESIRE i think within the administration to at best ignore data and put their head in the, sand and at worst to

realign resources away from this battle. UNQUOTE a spokesperson For Higher Representative Jim jordan Told reuters that the termination of the domestic terrorism tracking tool is a quote great step in the right direction of returning THE fbi to its primary crime fighting mission. Unquote Representative jordan previously in twenty twenty three ran a congressional panel that alleged THE fbi terrorism case tagging tool was being improperly used to target.

Conservatives After january, sixth three FORMER fbi agents testified at The republican led, panel and two of those former agents admitted to being paid By, patel who at the time was not director of THE. Fbi he was just a right wing. Influencer after being kicked out of the government after the First trump. Administration we've also seen The Joint Terrorism Task force largely shift their efforts towards immigration, enforcement HELPING ice with deeperas rotations and the so called wave

Of tesla. Terrorism and like the other thing is that this new nihilist violent extremism term isn't just replacing A. Gave it's not just replacing the anti government or anti authority of biolin. Extremism because THE agave term itself has three. Subcategories as reference to AN fbi document that outlines domestic terrorism activity from twenty fifteen to twenty, nineteen this includes militia violent, extremists anarchist violent, extremists and sovereign citizen violent.

Extremists and even in addition to those, three there's actually a newer subclassification from twenty twenty three called A gave, other which really isn't a great term at. All this is the problem with trying to use these like tracking and tagging tools is that they can get very. Convoluted but now they've seemingly collapsed all of these and are just using the term.

Here the big risks at play that like someone who Starts tesla on fire or causes some damage at A tesla dealership largely for the motivation of trying to stick it To Elon musk or something like that gets classified in a way by THE fbi that is similar to some of the folks you have previously talked about exactly doing things that most rational humans can agree are deeply more insidious than like set a car on.

stemming from frustration with. Society and that's a huge. Problem and in doing, so they're shifting focus away from like right wing militias who do the majority of like actual lethal.

Violence when these reports from like the past five years talk, about you, know militia violent, extremism it talks about how there is an increased to lethal threat from these militias to law, enforcement the government personnel due to factors related to grievances from the perceptions of fraud in the twenty twenty, election government measures related TO covid nineteen and legislation to

restrict firearms or expand immigration or manage public. Land and these are the people that do the vast majority of

planned attacks or executed. Attacks this report between twenty three outlines two attempted bombings by militia violenctreamists in early twenty twenty, one one by an individual targeted against data center thought to provide services to THE fbi AND, cia the author by two people against a State Democratic party headquarters In, Sacramento, california as well as the quote unquote t do dozens

of militia violenctarymists arrested for their involvement In january. Sixth so even though we're going to take the gas off of groups like those as well as as racially motivated, violenceremists this definition can still include a lot Of like anarchist violent, actremists which the fbidmits into twenty twenty three, report are most likely to engage in non lethal criminal activity and just impact law enforcement.

left like anarchistic. Extremism but in the administration's, mind the previous terms for this were tainted by crackdowns on right wing or patriot movements After january, Sixth and like the nihilist, violence streamism is not replacing the term terrorism, Necessarily like the Way clippenstein's suggested in his, article the word terrorism

appears frequently in these very documents that we've been. Discussing nor does the term terrorism have quote unquote limitations in, law As clippenstein said that like prevent its use in political. Prosecution if, anything it carries kind of special powers of punishment which can be over applied to increase the, sentences sway,

juries and strip. Rights we've seen bills to Label antifa as terrorists introduced to this, year the Whole tesla terrorism, thing and, historically like the use of terrorism has been used as a repression tool In Atlanta's Stop Cop city, movement which similarly has like a climate focus like you. Mentioned and what this new nihilism term lets them do is it allows The drop administration to signal to their base that they aren't going to be going after like

right wing malicious style groups, anymore not anti, government anti authority. Chemists, instead they're just going to target zany weirdos who want to destroy. Society it's a, looser more flexible term that

can be applied to a much wider swath of. People and like the kind of final THING i want TO i want to note here is that four groups like like seven six, four we really don't have a good term for them like sometimes some people have defended this nihilistic term specifically four groups like seven six, four since that was where it originally appeared in an industry that

these groups kind of defy classic. Categorization some of them are certainly motivated by racial bias in the case Of, cassup who's like tied WITH o AND, a but not specifically seven six. Four but a lot of these other seven six four guys who are mostly in it for the, pedophilia still do have anti government ideologies that they are roped in. With, NOW i have seen a few alternative terms lofted by certain independent researchers that don't really do

a good job but are gaining influence Under trump's. Government there's this like freelance researcher Named becca or Bicks wrights who mostly operates On. Twitter she's proposed the Term satanic accelerationism or s act not Good and this kind of outlines my problems with this person's research now out because all of the legitimate extremism researchers have kind of moved

away From twitter and are just On Blue. Sky, now people like this have like exploded in influence Under elon's shepherding Of, twitter and like this this person just spreads like satanic panic style writing that appeals to Conservative christian. Audiences she boasts about how many mutuals she has with These nazi. Terrorists she posts On, rumble she went on Info, wars so that kind of tells you everything you need

to know about this. Person and like a big part of her work is trying to downplay the right wing and a white supremacist influence in. Extremism she excitedly posted, quote THE fbi has coined a new term for this type of, individual nihilist bilin. Extremists this makes me so happy because it indicates that law enforcement are listening to researchers on the ground and are no longer considering these

groups Neo nazis or quote unquote white. Supremacist so, yeah this is a big part of this push is appealing to these types of people who don't want their weird pedo freaks to be labeled as right, wing even though they all are pretty far right wing terrorists in most. Cases this researcher also a falsely linked cast up with A ukrainian A nazi a group CALLED. Mku she later retracted this claim on, substack but left the original viral tweet up online Because, hey. Engagement her substack post reads.

Quote WHEN i first heard the news Of nicota cast, up my mind immediately darted to another NINE a AND mku linked individual Named. Nicota this turned out to be a mere, COINCIDENCE i, know because the Other nikota reached out to me personally to. Clarify it's moments like these that cause me to reflect on just how big this movement really is and just how close to the FIRE i. Am. Unquote this is not how you do extremism. Reporting this

is not how you do. Journalism but this does demonstrate kind of the problem with this term is, that, yeah groups like this do need a different, term maybe like, accelerationists violent. Acreamists that's a term you could use that if you're going to remove all the other. Acronyms but certainly the nihilism label just kind of complicates things and allows for the targeting of just a massive swath of the population that could become like political prosecutions that then

get linked to these child sexual abast material. Cases, okay that is my that's my that's my. Script, Michael how do you feel about that?

american as a. Parent i'm terrified on every. Front and you, know my simple guy takeaway here is the, yeah like the idea that this is going to both let some of the worst folks off the, hook or at least make it harder to classify them with the groups that should be classified, with while also making it easier to lump in forms of what many of us would consider more reasonable political activism under that umbrella is quite. Bad AND i, think of course for, me due to my

my pet. Interest you, know all of these instances of continuing to, like, pervert and misuse philosophical terms to have meanings developed over hundreds and thousands of years for these political, ends it is very.

always turned to. Philosophy i've been recommending different books to different, friends And i'm kind of interested, in like what you have to say about kind of what philosophy can offer us in these times of like existential.

Great in terms of more contemporary, Stuff i've been Very Frederick jamison pilled recently nice AND i THINK i Mean i've Read jamison before on and, off but recently dove in more. Deeply and there's One, OKAY i have it at arms, reach SO i can say that the title correctly That i've really been. Enjoying it's called An American.

Utopia Dual power in The Universal army By Frederick, jamison edited by Saw, Voygiak and it's this Large jamison essay about what he sees as an alternative for leftist power In, america responses from a bunch of other. SCHOLARS i have found it very. Interesting but for, me at, LEAST i find comfort in the fact that others have accurately diagnosed and understood what is happening right now and at least give us the tools to understand the, thing so it feels less nebulous and.

on and not feel the need to try. To like you cause every you, know philosophical evolution to come about via your own.

it's useful to know what they've. Thought and like this is, like you, know my work is mostly looking at like current events and like trying to track but like extremism and like what the government is, doing and you, know more information always helps me choose how to navigate in the. World that's why do episodes like. This AND i think philosophy is just one other side of. That unless you have anything else to, say do you want to talk about where people can find you? Online and your new YouTube?

Yep YouTube Slash Michael oburns Or i'm gonna be doing more stuff quite, regularly extremes and video, essays largely doing some of the stuff we were just talking, about using philosophy and concepts from theory and from theory to try to understand what's going on in both the political and like the social and interpersonal, Levels Like i'm working on a Thing i'm excited about on like, depression, capitalism and mental. Health so, yeah And i'm on all most of the

social Media's i'm Just Michael burns Or MICHAEL. O, burns relatively easy to find on most.

Philadelphia if you've never had the pleasure of Seeing vermin at a, protest he's essentially a rodeo clown for riot, cops and his example taught me a lot about how to communicate to a group of, angry scared people in tense. Situations those lessons came in handy for me back in twenty. Twenty but The George Floyd uprising is now almost five

years in the. Past trump is once again in. Power very little seems to stand between him and the exercise of a kind of, arbitrary dictatorial violence that this nation has seldom seen within its own, borders but as often sponsored, elsewhere Including El, salvador Where trump has sent hundreds Of american residents and plans to send, thousands perhaps tens of thousands.

More the purpose of this essay is to provide my predictions for the next six months to a. Year What i'm writing here is, speculative but it is based on the best DATA i have available and numerous Conversations i've had with activists current federal, employees former, soldiers and retired law. Enforcement there are a million places WHERE i could, start BUT i feel like the most responsible place to begin is by answering this, question is now the time to?

Panic last, year After biden's disastrous debate, PERFORMANCE i put out a podcast essay Titled Don't. Panic it was my most shared episode of this podcast that, year AND i felt pretty good about the response Until trump won, again AND i found it briefly impossible to take my own. Advice Since january of twenty twenty, five the fascist takeover has only, accelerated AND i have lost count of the number of people who've asked, me is it time to? Panic the answer to that is still, no but not

because there's no reason to. Panic in, fact panic is a natural reaction to our present. Moment if your fight or flight reflexes haven't been, triggered well they might be. Broken even, so don't, panic because in combat and, disasters in any dangerous situation you might find yourself panic is what will kill you as surely as anything. Else there's a concept in military THEORY i bring up, often something introduced to soldiers undergoing training. Today it's called the ode.

Loop it describes the process people go through while acting and reacting under, fire and particularly while deciding how to act and react under. Fire it stands for, observe, orient, decide and. Act if you can interrupt any part of that,

loop you can stop your enemy from fighting back. Effectively the basic principle of THE oda loop functions on the grand strategy scale as well as it does in a. Gunfight this is the point behind the flood the zone, strategy orchestrated By Stephen miller and the other intellectual loom and aaries Behind trump. Too the fire hose of outrage is to distract you from observing everything that's, happening to keep you off balance so you can't orient, yourself to

stop you from deciding and. Acting Elon musk's purchase Of twitter helped to supercharge the bullshit. CANON ai accelerated the spread of lies on social media beyond all of our worst, nightmares and this has helped blind and divide the people who should have linked arms to stop this shit before it got to the point that it's at. TODAY i want you to think of how many prominent leftists have

fallen repeatedly for right wing propaganda like. That russia would never Invade, ukraine or That trump might actually be somehow better For. Gaza these and a million other things have blinded and hobbled potential. RESISTANCE i might also bring up the Whole maga communist, movement but the less set about those,

people the. Better, meanwhile columnists at liberal legacy publications Like The times have fallen for every hyped up story about transgender athletes or woke kids on college, campuses and the danger of the illiberal left poses to free. Speech they've denied genocide and demonized those who protest against, it and too many Elected democrats have taken their lead as the path of least. Resistance many have pulled right for reasons

far more. Sinister the fact That Gavin, newsom governor Of, california is hosting fascists on his new podcasts while mailing burner phones to tech CEOs points towards something, dark, immediate.

Deadly we live now in the culmination of a successful decades long plot, two in the words Of Curtis, jarvin repeal the twentieth century and turn this nation into a dictatorship where our lives and our collective national arsenal are the personal property of some dudes who inherited oil money or invested In facebook back in like two thousand and.

Five the early stages of the, plan of, course date back well Before Peter tiele Or Elon musk Or Donald trump begin and when a coalition of would be oligarchs tried to OVERTHROW fdr in what has become known as The Business, plot and were thwarted by A marine general Named Smedley. Butler these men wanted revenge for The New, deal but they found seizing power at the top harder than they'd, hoped and so they embarked on a, slower

bottom up. Approach hence The John Birch, society the creation of countless think, tanks and the generation's long effort to stack The Supreme. Court the war on abortion was a concerted step towards this, plan an artificial creation alongside the birth of the religious right as a political. Coalition there was initially a small group of men at the center of the, web guys Like William Brignery won And William

Brignery doo Or Paul. Wayrich but the engine of cultural and political change forged from the late forties to the nineteen seventies was so successful that at some point it became self, perpetuating and when a gaggle of tech bros found themselves with more wealth than any humans had ever, held the machine was there to mold them and to be used by. Them it's all worked so damn well that many PEOPLE i know have lost hope. Entirely we're,

fucked goes the. Script they're gonna send us to the, camps and they can't be, stopped at least not without apocalyptic. Bloodshed well that's not necessarily. So now people have already died as a result of this, administration a lot of, them and that will continue to. Happen but a collapse into total carnage is not, inevitable nor is a future that offers us nothing but a.

their interest nor a strong. Suit But Curtis, yarvin chief profit of the Neo reactionaries And Peter teel's pet, philosopher is in a different. Position he knows people in power listen to some of what he has to, say and over the last few months his profile has risen. ENORMOUSLY i can take credit for at least tiny amount of. That many normal liberals and Elected democrats now know who he. Is this exposes him to a danger that was not

present for him During trump's first. Term if the current fascist salience should be pushed back and this movement, fails there could be and should be, Prosecutions and he rightly fears that if this, happens he might follow in the footsteps Of Alfred, rosenberg The nazi high theoretician who was executed At. Nuremberg that's why On march sixth he published a messi, sprawling seven thousand word essay Titled barbarians And mandarins in his trademark nigh unreadable. Style it comes with the.

Subheading as soon as it stops, accelerating it stalls and. Explodes if you want to spare yourself the headache of reading through one tenth of a novel of yarvins at best turgid. Prose there's a good article by the Nerd reich that breaks all this. Down we'll link it in the show, notes but the gist is That yarvin Thinks musk And trump have been too, slow have embraced too many half, measures and the whole authoritarian project is careening towards. Disaster.

Quote unless the spectacular earthquakes Of january And february are dwarfed In march And april by new and unprecedented abuses of The richter, scale The trump regime will start to wither and eventually. Dissipate it cannot stay at its current level of, power which is too high to sustain but too low to. Succeed it has to keep doing things that have never been done. Before as soon as it stops,

accelerating it stalls and. Explodes now the week's since have seen massive and rising public awareness Of seacott the terrorism TO tenh facility In El salvador being used as a concentration camp by The trump. Regime this might rightly be called a new and unprecedented. Abuse but there's a couple of issues, Here at least as far As yarvin sees.

Them for one, thing the people targeted there have been, migrants people who are in THE us either illegally or in THE us on visas that have been, revoked people who have been accused of being part Of, trindagua but not the people That yarvin wants to see, liquidated, because as he writes in this, column the thing that he thinks The trump administration should be doing right now is quite literally gassing media personalities and politicians who don't align

with his, viewpoint basically literally killing the. Opposition and since he's shown to be unwilling to do, that the fact that he's shipping people to concentration camps on its own isn't terrifying. Enough, now the other thing that's Concerning yarvin is that while the use of this facility In El salvador as a foreign concentration camp by The trump regime is terrifying and is, unprecedented it's also been met with

a significant, response one that burges on unprecedented. Itself i'm not just talking about the protests or of the Recent Supreme court ruling ordering a temporary halt of such. Deportations i'm referring to something else that's happened due to the sheer panic caused by the knowledge that our president has a concentration camp and has been talking about SHIPPING us

citizen dissidents. There i'm talking about stuff like the fact that formerly conservative Columnist Bill crystal is now calling for the outright abolition Of, ice and the arch Neoliberal Mealymouth David brooks calling for a general strike in the pages of The New York times while quoting from The Communist. Manifesto this is more than just a vibe. Shift it's an open realization and acceptance by prominent people who are neither radical nor revolutionaries that any, action even the formerly,

unimaginable might be necessary and justified in this. Region, now make no. Mistake first, off this is because a lot of these people are worried about their own privileges going away under a dictatorial. Regime but that doesn't change the fact that this is a crack in the very foundation of the authoritarian power. Structure yarvin is scared, then because we weren't supposed to be here. Now harvard was supposed to have folded Like columbia and then have been slowly

and quietly. Liquidated the tame press was supposed to turn wholly for the regime or be, disappeared not Quote Karl marx and urge people into the streets to do a general. Strike SO i don't find all this cheery BECAUSE i Think David brooks is going to become Shithead Shay. GUEVARA i am, embraced, however by the failure that this represents

for them and above us who seek unchecked. Dominance cracks are also visible in the recent history Of Elon, musk who has watched the value of the stock that underpins his whole empire. Collapse he fought desperately to Convince trump not to go through with the tariffs that would punish it. Further the result we See trump assuring his inner circle That elon is on the way, out While musk himself prepares to step back from doge in the hope that

it will somehow protect the remainder of his. Ambitions these are all good, signs and the damage will continue to. Spread, however and this brings me to my next. Prediction The empire's gonna strike. Back we are in for a hot, summer my, friends and there's no way around. THAT i mean this in the literal, sense that it will probably be the hottest summer on, record although that fact will be true of every subsequent summer in our. Lives BUT i also mean this in the sense that things are

going to cook off in the streets very. Soon this is something the administration has quite openly been waiting to. See trump has made no secret of his desire to use The Insurrection act not only at the, border but to SEND us troops INTO us cities to crush riots and punish leftist. Demonstrators this was a desire hatched in reaction to The George floyd, uprising and it always seems to be envisioned by the right as targeted against black

clad antifa. Types the reality is that anti fascists have not been a consistent presence on the ground around the country for some, time at least not organizing in the way that they were back when antifa was a. Buzzword there are numerous reasons for, this but the biggest is that the fascist movement has moved beyond waving flags in the street and getting into fist fights to try and scare. PEOPLE a lot of them are running federal law enforcement

agencies in the. Military now Proud boys just tain't a, priority not for those on the left who want to stop, this or frankly for the. ADMINISTRATION i expect protests around the country in the coming months for several, reasons but the likeliest event to provoke severe civil disruption has a rise in food, prices in the rise of everything else in, price as well as a collapsing economy courtesy of the president's.

Tariffs there are already numerous signs of, this both in terms of the volume of shipping coming into The United states and early signs of collapsing crop yields in The United. States and this is where a study of history helps one, out because nothing but nothing brings down regimes like rising bread, prizes and any attempt to crack down will be stymy by the fact that a decent chunk of the elites

who Backed trump before will be suffering. Too, obviously the people closest to him are making bank off the economic upswings and downswings over the whole teriff. Issue but there's a lot of other, people people who supported, him people who thought he had their, back who weren't quite close enough to, power and they're Watching trump shoot their own fortunes in the kneecap because they built their money on free.

TRADE i won't pretend to know where things are gonna pop off or will be the, hottest but the evidence shows the regime at least Expects, washington D C to play a central role in what comes. Next Republican congress members recently reintroduced a bill to repeal DC's self, rule And trump Appointed Ed martin to be the city, attorney a man, who in the words OF Usa today Columnist

Chris brennan, quote lacks experience but loves. Revenge, now the fact That Elon musk and His doze cronies left so many in the city and the surrounding area unemployed after their purge of the administrative state means that there's an even higher number of, motivated angry people with free time and experiencing organizing, large complex systems who have nothing to do right. NOW a similar set of circumstances brought us

to the twenty twenty. Uprisings this was not just a product of the months of isolation or of the brutality Of George floyd's, murder but of the sheer number of people who were out of work and who were finally given a chance to take out their anxiety at an authoritarian president tightening his. Grip and today that grip is even tighter and the danger more. Real we have a president openly discussing his desire to Put american citizens in

a foreign concentration. Camp trump and his inner circle are hoping for protests that stay isolated TO dc and perhaps a few major blue, Cities portland and the. Like this would provide an opportunity to send in the, troops to utilize The Insurrection act to s people in the, street and to send some ring leaders off to L. Salvador this would be the riskiest option For trump in some.

Ways Pete hegseth has not been a competent or Popular secretary Of, defense and ASKING us troops to fire on protesters opens up the risk that some junior officer might bulk at that, order which could create a cascading chain of. Disobedience such things have sparked rapid collapse in other dictatorships throughout.

twenty provoke the largest domestic uprising and living. Memory people have not forgotten, this and some blue State democrats have even made let's, say confusing noises to that. Effect case in, Point Governor Bob ferguson Of washington just signed a bill barring other State National guard units from Entering washington without

his approval unless they were mobilized by The. President, now as that last part might key you when, on this bill doesn't have a lot of legal force or any really at, all but it's a sign that even fairly milk toast Elected democrats are starting to consider the real possibility of a federal invasion of their. States The president has discussed sending out of state troops into blue cities, before largely in the context of cracking down on immigration

and sanctuary. Cities this is all dangerous, language but going further than just language carries risk for the regime. TOO i would not be shocked if we were to see The Texas National guard or, whoever whichever state occupying let's Say, chicago after federal law enforcement makes good on the threats that have been made by members of The trump administration to arrest governors who aid in a bet undocumented migrants LIKE. Jb, Pritzker and an act like that would surely spark mass

protests In chicago and very likely. Elsewhere the fact that a move like that would have such a risk of sparking mass, resistance as well as further legal, challenges might keep The trump administration focused on smaller fish and less dangerous, outrages at least for the time. Being and if that's the route they, CHOOSE i think something different might be. Likely AND i call this potential path forward the pressure, cooker and we'll talk about, that but, first here's more.

Ads when public unrest exploded in twenty, twenty it did so after four solid years of build. Up if you'll, remember the earliest fascist anti fascist street clashes of that, period started before the twenty sixteen, elections were largely focused around speeches at campuses by right wing bocketeurs and dueling

demonstrations in a handful of. Cities the first wave of such activity crested In charlottesville twenty seventeen with tragic, results but the vibe it set and the people it trained continued to take part in street, actions and many of them formed the infrastructural core of the movement that exploded

onto the scene After George floyd's. Murder the last year of serious protests have focused more on the genocide And gaza than, anything and it's not coincidental that the first wave of deportations have heavily targeted legal residents who took part in those. Demonstrations Since trump took office AND doze started doing its, thing there have been more large scale

demos that focused directly on the. Regime, now these have been quite manageable from the regime's point of, view and they have not yet attracted the same kind of, crackdown but that won't remain the case as people grow more. Desperate any fool can see that the apparatus of repression constructed to punish genocide protesters will be turned on, democrats former federal, employees and people who are just hungry and pissed about rising food. Prizes, however this represents another tight

rope scenario for the. Regime these demonstrations are, large and unlike student protests Against, israel the media has proved less eager to marginalize the participants as. Extremists as time goes on and things get, worse folks who last year scoffed at college students occupying campus buildings may themselves consider if perhaps it might be time to fox some shit. Up this will be an uneven, process with sudden leaps forward and pulls, back and it will provoke an equally uneven state.

Response there will be attempts to send so called instigators and organizers. Overseas du Will salvador unless the public reaction to, this which is building AS i, type continues to escalate to the extent that it becomes. Unfeasible if, so there are ample domestic locations to detain or even disappear those

the regime considers. Dangerous first on the chopping block will be the people whose heads are currently closest to the, blade organizers and demonstrators against, genocide whose citizenship is not at all in. QUESTION i expect if, large disruptive demonstrations do threaten the administration's, hold they will also start to our Target antifa, again which will start with the targeting of longtime, activists many of whom would have been people arrested or at least heavily surveiled in twenty.

we've Watched ice do With. Trendagua they'll break down the door of whoever they, wish argue tattoos or possessions of certain literature or whatever is proof of, membership and then those who survive the raids will find themselves in the most restrictive detention the regime feels secure placing them. In if things follow WHAT i suspect is the likeliest, path we will watch this PROCESS ebb and flow over the

next several. Months each spring and, summer protests will grow and peak in the hottest, months with new cities and tactics being attempted regularly by groups constantly reeling from raids that are devastating and, terrifying but due to the incompetence of AN fbi whose investigative capacity has been, neutered failed to really disrupt. Things as the weather cools, off exhausted

activists will lick their wounds and make new. Plans scattered acts of disruption carried out by small groups or individual cells will occur year, round BUT i expect large scale demonstrations and clashes between demonstrators and law enforcement to follow a pattern not so different from What afghanistan veterans knew was fighting, season hot summers of mass, activity winters of, raids and experimentation to scout holes for the next year's.

Offensive and as time goes, on the energy will, build the tension will, build and of course we might find ourselves reaching towards something that explodes in the not too distant, future perhaps a year or two down the. Line, now of, course none of this will occur in a vacuum or independent of the news churn that we've been drowning in for. Years and this brings me to my next, prediction which

is the coming of politics as. UNUSUAL i apologize for coming back to The David brooks of it, all but seeing a man who in twenty seventeen wrote The trump had changed and we really needed to stop stressing out over, him and then wrote a column attacking millennials for their tribalism call for a general strike is a, sign and it's not a sign That brooks has gotten. Smarter it's a sign that we've entered radical, times and that radicalization

spares not even the. Centrist if the worst case scenario occurs in a few weeks from, NOW us soldiers are gunning down demonstrators while ice officers krt Elected democrats off To, seacott feel free to disregard this. Passage but if the somewhat slower path, PREVAILS i expect to see more politicians and news editors chase viewers as they sprint left or

at least away from the dissolving. Center we've watched this process occur on the right during The biden, years and to a, degree it is still occurring out of a fear of reprisals under The trump. Regime i'm finalizing the script on the day Sixty minutes Producer Bill owens stepped down over interference from paramount executives into his coverage Of Donald.

Trump but the polls have started moving against the. Right trump's public approval on immigration policy is under water for the first time in, years and his approval on everything else, is while not always at record, lows diving with significant. Speed the next several months of shipping, data as well as concerning early reporting on farm, yields suggests a near future in which a lot less will be available for.

Everyone we saw what a rising price of eggs did To, biden and we've also Seen Senator chris Van holland go almost overnight from a marginal figure IN us politics to one of the most Famous democrats in the nation because he had the modest courage to fly to L salvador and call the president's use of a foreign black site what it. Was there will be more people Like Van holland who display courage previously unseen in a moment of.

Trial but much more than, that there will be, opportunists those who see the wind blowing and chase the approval of crowds more willing to countenance radical action in the

streets than they were a year. Ago most politicians and most thought leaders in the old media are, reactive And i'm not saying that this will, change merely that what they react to will change because of who is in charge now and because of the desperation of the times brought on By republican, policies which is going to paint a target on the backs of conservative leaders as large as the targets they've been painting on the backs of. Dissidence and all of this means one, thing which is

we're approaching the age of weird. Terror so much has happened in this, shitty stupid year THAT i think we've all. Forgotten twenty twenty five opened with a military veteran blowing himself up in a cyber truck in front of The Trump hotel And casino In Las. Vegas his reasoning was based as much on the numerous head injuries he'd suffered in his service as it was on his exposure to right wing, propaganda which convinced him that The democrats needed

to be dealt. With but he saw things clearly enough to know that yet another mass shooting or self, immolation or even a run of the mill bomb wouldn't have

garnered him or his manifesto any. Attention so instead he picked a cyber truck and A trump, building symbols of the two most viral men of our very stupid, era and he blew one of those up in front of the, other and by, gummet we all did pay attention for a few, days at least late last, year an anonymous gunman the government believes to Be Luigi mangione was even more successful at holding our attention with an even stranger, attack a brazen and i perfectly executed assassination carried out

by a man with a dazzling smile and the wisdom to pick the most universally hated target that exists, today a healthcare. Ceo we have all watched so many mass shootings at, schools at grocery, stores, nightclubs everywhere imaginable that they've lost the ability to shock. Us but targeted assassinations of people at the top of the food chain are so rare that they can't help but draw eyeballs and sheer rollicking, strangeness like we saw In vegas has a

captivating power all its. Own we will see more of both kinds of attacks in the months to. Come the arson attempt On Governor shapiro's home, bazar at least for the extensive damage, done might be seen as another data point on this. List but as new figures rise to prominence within new protest, movements we will see attempts to kill. Them furious and Derange trump supporters armed with cars and guns And trump branded pocket dives will do as they've been,

doing and this part won't be. New WHAT i do expect will be new is the increased threat felt by the oligarchs at the top of the, system as intelligent and patient young people continue to plot ways to go after them and the places and times where they feel. Invulnerable AND i also expect that editors and journalists will continue to learn that these actions draw eyeballs more than

almost anything. Else and while all that's going, on the truly unbalanced among us we'll find ways to hitchhike off the well publicized turmoil coming our way and make their own confounding. Statements there will be public suicides and attacks utilizing weapons and tools we can't yet, imagine at least not openly on a podcast without receiving a visit from some friendly alphabet boy or. ANOTHER i don't know what exactly to expect beyond the unexpected and the very very.

Silly and of, course as we talk about weird, TERRORISM i don't mean to discount The nazi accelerationist types. Here they'll keep, trying but if they want to raise above the chatter and an even more crowded media, ecosystem even they're going to find ways to get weird with. It after, all an attack no one notices isn't likely to accelerate much of. Anything AND i guess that's What i've got right. Now i've got ten pages or so on WHAT i see.

COMING i didn't come up with a, smooth sexy ending for this like a writer, should Because i'm tired and thinking about this isn't. Fun BUT i did a, lot and there you. ARE i suppose the thing you're asking now is what the fuck DO i do about? It and you know that's what we talk about a lot on this. Show organize with your, friends get, involved find ways to help. People take a stop the bleed, glass and the love Of, god keep your eyes.

start collecting on defaulted student. Loans Beanie Clad Tim poole joins The White house press, pool and Hippie facebook moms rejoice with artificial food dies being banned Across? America how are we?

Man The timpool thing was was really. Wild Press Secretary Carolyn levitt gave a give a glowing introduction To Tim poole's addition to the press, room And tim's first question to the administration was was asking why news media just lies so much About trump and journalism here from Comrade, tim really probing. Question let's pivot TOWARDS rfk and the concerning registry that has been, discussed which is a word

you never like to. Hear whenever someone brings up the concept of a, registry it's usually, bad always.

be to see the immediate threat coming. From so First i'm going to start with like what his been, said and before we get to the, registry we have to go back to what he was talking about on the campaign trail because prior and this is prior to him Endorsing Donald, trump when OUR Fk junior was like an individual like running for president on his own under his independent, campaign he started talking about wellness, farms, right and these were specifically in the language that he, use places that

people who were addicted to psychiatric. Medication antidepressants he named specifically antidepressants and, stimulants as well as people with opiate, addictions, right and he has since talked about other drug addictions as. Well could go to spend three or four years working on a. Farm he always frames it as also like learning. Skills so it's this mix OF i want people to be able to work in this you, know lovely, bucolic you,

know agrarian setting where they'll gain working. Skills and then there's also pepperdin these very frightening phrases like they need to be reparented right. Now in addition to, this he's not just that this is all focused On americans who are taking medications that he thinks are over prescribed or purely. Unnecessary, right that's always the, Way like psychiatric. Medication he almost has a scientologist attitude towards it that like this is

all essentially. Unnecessary and, obviously you, know all of this stuff comes out of their elements of this that were true at one. Point for, example back in the, nineties Like riddlin was wildly overprescribed to. Kids but the way in which he's translated this now is that basically everyone on a, stimulant everyone on an, antidepressant is on it.

Unnecessarily and in a podcast in twenty twenty, four he went further by kind of tying a lot of this to, race specifically stating, quote every black kid is now just standard put on adderall on SSRIs, benzos which are known to induce, violence and those kids are going to have a chance to go somewhere and get. Reparented so that's all deeply.

can choose to go into and choose to. Leave that's what he's, said, Right, okay, now perfectly reasonable when a guy in an administration like this is talking about putting up camps to be, like, WELL i don't know IF i believe, him but it's not accurate that he said he wants to arrest millions of people and force them onto. Camps he just has not said, that, Right, yeah, Yeah AND i think it behooves us.

these camps or. Not there's certainly willingness within The Republican party to force people into different kinds of quote unquote treatment like. This and one THING i think that particularly is the way in which the right has liked to shift blame for gun violence and mass shootings off of the availability of firearms and onto people who are on psychiatric.

would have access to the. Outdoors under the colony, model patients generally lived in cottages designed to be more homelike than Institutional patients were also given, jobs and many were expected to work on colony, farms where they grew their own. Food Doctor William, sprattling the medical superintendent of The Craig colony For epileptics In New, york declared that the farm model meant, nature the great, restorer will have an opportunity

to do her. Best it didn't. Work supporters of the colony of model argued that with, time clean, air, sunshine and a restricted, diet physical labor could heal, patients but that didn't. Happen data from The Craig, colony one of The america's first electic, colonies illustrates this. Point during the nineteen, forties thanks to funding and staff limitations because Of World War, two conditions In North american institutions were particularly grim the.

Institutions nineteen forty three to nineteen forty four annual report to The State commissioner Of Medtal hygiene shows that less than one percent of patients were discharged is cured that. Year during that same, period over two hundred patients attempted to leave the colony without, permission and five percent of

the total patient population. Died and SO i mean that's reason enough to be deeply, worried, right the fact that without saying LIKE rfk wants to do what The nazis, DID rfk wants to do what The america already did and it killed a huge number of the people who were interned in those. Camps AND i guess the THING i keep bringing up is that WHEN i think about what the threat model is more than Fucking auschwitz for people who on OUR, nssris it's A Judge Rotenberg center

on every. Corner it's camps like these where costs are going to be cut and there's not going to be good access for any kind of independent monitors to make sure health and safety are being. Followed it's not that people are going to be shoveled into. Ovens it's that as a result of this system being incompetently applied to the most. Vulnerable And i'm not even talking about my worry at the moment being that everyone on AN ssr will be forced.

every adult on AN ssri into a death. Camp it's that they're going to try and be putting these kids instead of you, know the different juvenile programs that, exist instead of any kind of functional medical, Program they're going to force them into hisities like, this and it's going to become easier for facilities like The Judge Rotenberg, center which horribly abuses and tortures autistic, kids to spread and to get state and federal. Funding and that's that's the, threat.

Right it's an extension of what we're doing and what we've. Done it's not a carbon copy of what The nazis are doing or did speaking of The, nazis.

Thing and while he was specifically talking about people with quote unquote profound, autism it's reasonable for people to, assume, like, yeah but that's just kind of what he sees is basically, everyone, right AND i don't think that that's an unfair. Assumption and then coming right up on the heels of, that there was an announcement from THE, nih The National institutes Of health ABOUT Rfk junior's new effort to quote unquote study.

Autism and basically what they're going to be doing is collecting comprehensive patient data with broad coverage of THE us population and kind of organizing it within THE. Nih this is the first time this has been. Done but they are going to be grabbing basically everything they can get

their hands. On and we're talking about a mix of med medication records from, pharmacies lab testing, records genomic data from people who like go to the you, know department of the basically data taken by THE, va data taken by The Indian Health, service as well as data by from private. Insurance and they're also going to be buying data from smartwatchs from stuff like. Fitbits, right who does sell their data to anybody with like twenty dollars hanging

out the back of their. Pocket and as a heads, up if you are looking for a fitness, tracker you should look more into. This there are a few that have reasonably good data protection. Histories garman is one of. Them this does not mean it's. Perfect all of them will hand over your data if given a court order to do. So none of them are going to break the law to hold on to your. Data But garman doesn't just like sell willy nilly to anybody who wants

to like advertise based on. It right that, said most of them do the last Thing i'd write was something like twelve out of fifteen different free fitness tracking apps they checked sold data pretty, Widely so.

different health problems within the. Population these are their, claims but also they want to create a disease registry specifically to Track americans with. Autism, Right and this is Because kennedy describes autism as a preventable, disease which is not. Accurate and the fact that this database and these other

databases are being made should be very. Worrisome, Right it's both important to talk about the fact that he is specifically signaling out autism while also stating like that's not the only thing they're looking.

Healthcare they want the freedom to experiment with medications on their kids to quote unquote fix. Them and this data is going to be used both to provide basically to be massaged to provide evidence that different treatments that don't do shit do in fact. Work AND i THINK i have suspicions of financial interests. THERE i keep getting questioned, like, well what do you think is going to happen when the autism cures don't, Work, well then they're going to

put people in. Camps, no the autism cures already don't. Work this is an. Industry they make money off of. This they make money off of drugging and medically torturing these. Children and as far that, is the threat is that it is going to get easier to do at a larger, scale and it is going to be harder to, fight even illegal to provide good information on what does and does not. Work and that is what's happening right now as opposed to something we might be worried, about you,

know years down the. Line and, yes we should fight anytime the government is trying to put populations of people into a motherfucking database like, This we should fight all of this tooth and. NAIL i just think this is WHAT i see as the. Danger you, Know, yeah the risk is this to centralized. Stuff it's a centralized acceleration for things that have already been, happening less so than just like large scale direct sator.

Orders if we start from the top and go, down The Supreme court temporarily banned the government from Renditioning venezuelan men in the district Of North texas To El. SALVADOR i think people maybe sometimes this got a little misinterpreted on social, media like you have to look at who the class, was and the class was a group Of venezuelan men who were in immigration detention In North texas who were going to be sent To Wel, salvador and

that was who got the. Relief the case at the time was pending before THE Us court Of appeals for The Fifth, circuit and The Supreme court said that once that court, acted the government could appeal to The Supreme. Court, however they, added the government should, not And i'm quoting, here remove any member of the putative class of detainees from The United states until further order of This.

Facilitate Bregor garcia's released from custody In El. Salvulo their claiming they were ordered to return, him and somehow in their, minds returning him does not include ensuring his, release like they're saying that they're only obliged to transport him should he be released. Anyway genies in a court order called this quote a wilful and bad faith refusal to comply with the discovery. Obligations geni's also called the government's assertions

of executive privilege quote equally. Specious The city Of hyattsville in this case also clarified through a press release that, quote at no time did any member OF hpd identify or file any report Classifying Abrego garcia as a member of any. Gang despite, this the executive branch is still

going with that he's a violent gang. Member they also doxed his wife this week by releasing a protective order that she had once filed and, withdrawn and when that was, released it contained her a, dress so she's now hiding in a safe.

one of, Them Ricardo. Pradovasquez he's not among the two hundred and thirty eight people we know on the manifest for those sent Twelve. Salvador he doesn't appear to be In Venice, whaler which is where his passport is, from and the fact that the government claims that they sent. Him the government has said they sent him on The march fifteenth. Flights he's not listed. There he's not visible in. Photos has led to concerns that we might have sent

more people To El salvador than we currently know. About he entered the country with A cbp one appointment, right which of all the ways to, enter is the one that THE us government was trying to force people to use at that.

Right this concern has been compounded by the fact that it also emerged this week that THE us has sent at least one, Detainee Omar abdul Sata amen To, rwanda and the combination of these two, things raises are concerned that they are sending third country nationals to detention in

other countries that we are not yet aware. Of, right of, course The Rwanda plan was something that THE uk government hatched a long time, ago and The kagami government In rwanda seems to see this offer right as a way of gaining legitimacy with governments in the Global, north especially given the widespread criticism for his actions in The Democratic

republic Of. Congo, recently from The, handbasket which is like a kind of substacky, outlet they've reviewed memos between THE us government and the embassy In, rwanda And i'm quoting from one of them. Here THE us provided a one time payment of one hundred thousand dollars to support social, services residency, documents and work. Permits rwanda has, also according to the Hand, basket agreed to accept ten more third country.

Nationals so THE us is Paying rwanda a little bit more than it's Paying El salvador rate it was Paying El salbora twenty thousand per person per, year but it's a one time. Payment, NONETHELESS i struggled to believe that you could concoct a way in which it would Cost rwanda one hundred grand to produce a residency document and

a work permit for An iraqi. National but, yeah this has obviously led to the concern that people are being sent to other places that we don't don't yet know about talking to people being.

this along with his. Lawyers he says he approached the agent looking for, directions having had a seizure and been in the hospital and when he.

Name it's laughable to suggest that he like consentingly signed. This, Yeah but nonetheless he was detained for ten days till his family produced his documents in.

us citizen was detained On wednesday the. Sixteenth this is a twenty year old born In, Georgia Juan Carlo's Lopez. Gomez he was pulled over while driving to work near The florida. Border he doesn't speak Much english Or. Spanish he speaks an indigenous mind, language but he gave his REAL id card And Social security card over to a state. Trooper he was detained and charged with illegally entering the

state as a quote unquote unauthorized. Alien, similarly the trooper claims That Lopez gomez said that he was in the country. Illegally this is like some kind of communication error or these law enforcement officers are just like lying or trying to construct like language traps to make someone agree to a statement that admits that they're in the country, illegally which allows them to be. Detained he was put into

a twenty four hour ice. Hoold the next, day a federal judge verified his birth, certificate which was brought by his, mother but claims to lack the authority to release, him though he was released Later thursday, night and he was arrested under a New florida law signed by The santas last, month which a judge blocked. Earlier this month On april.

Fourth this basically allows the state troopers to act as their state's own like border, patrol and it penalizes immigrans who quote unquote knowingly enter or attempt to enter the state after entering The United states by eluding or avoiding examination or inspection by immigration officers.

even it's not even like racial profiling. Anymore like it's it's they're just attempting to black bag like random non white people that they're just running. Across, yes and so of course they're like GRABBING us, citizens right cause they're just grabbing random. People but it's like they're just fucking doing this to. Everyone this has happened in other states as. Well there's been instance like, this like the past few months which have which have increased in frequency Since.

Unsuspended but we got a view of how that happened from The Wall Street, journal and The Wall Street journal reports That Secretary Treasurer Scott bessett And Commerce Secretary Howard lutnik basically waited Until trump Advisor Peter navarro was out of the, room and then it was in a, meeting and then they Cornered trump and we're, like you gotta roll these terror you gotta do this pause on the.

so they can grab control of the fucking puppet. Rains but this this does actually lay bare something that's sort of important about, this which is that like there is a huge fight inside of The trump administration between kind of lutnik who's like the representative of a bunch of different sort of sectors Of american, capital, Right like he he's a representative of like you're fucking Like walgreens, dipshits, right and like he's also representative of the with the finance,

people and those people are losing their fucking minds over the tariffs because it's again going to destroy the. Economy But navarro is you, know it's just like a hardline

sort of like Anti china. Ideologue And navarro is the person who's been driving the most intense versions of these, tariffs and it's a real issue for everyone else in the administration who doesn't want this to, happen Because navarro is like the one guy in the administration and The trump actually likes and so they can't directly move against him because they. Lose Like Elon musk tried this and

like it got. Nowhere and so you know what we've been seeing is is just like, again the tariff policy here is just being set by who's the last person

in the room with. Him, yeah so we're probably still like about sixty days ish out from these terroists coming back into a. FACT i, mean this basically means like they'll be hitting in the, summer which is also just like absolutely the worst conceivable time for these terrors to take effect in terms of like if you were just like deliberately trying to cause a massive popular mobilization against.

there are no, negotiations. Right everyone keeps talking about how THE us is going to do negotiated settlement With. China there have not been any. Negotiations there are not. Negotiations there has not even been a process to start negotiations because you, know the last stories we had about this is that like neither side wants to be the person to like start going to the table because like asking

the other side for negotiations makes them look. Weak Like trump has been Asking china to ask him to cert of. Negotiations The chinese are refusing And the second issue, here and this is the more substantive problem with with a sort of negotiated back, out is that The Trump navarro position hinges on the line that the trade deficit inherently

like With, china is proof Of chinese market. Manipulation and the thing, is there's no actual way to systematically address that right like, That there's nothing that like Either china or THE us could do that would that would reverse the trade. Deficit so there's no sort of like you, know like, yeah like like the obvious way out here will be for Like trump to take some kind of weird symbolic victory and Like china to be like we're

doing a fenntional crackdown or some. Shit but the thing, is, like ideologically for someone Like, navarro And navarro is the important figure, here Like navarro just Wants china destroy, it, Right there's no actual negotiating process that he can do that will actually sort of like make this like negotiation shit happen and have it actually like eliminited. Tariffs the only thing that can happen basically is a political battle inside of The trump administration Where davarro gets pushed out.

Somehow but, Again navarro is Like trump's. Guy SO i just don't buy all of, this all of the fucking stories that are coming.

From china to THE, us like internship container ship. Traffic, right we're talking talking About i'm just gonna quote FROM cnbc. Here so they're talking About, optimizer which is like a tracking system for, ships and they, said, quote year on, year the data shows a forty four percent drop in vessels schedule to arrive the week Of may fourth To may. Tenth now that that's not actually necessarily a forty percent drop in, traffic because there'll be more shit when like

other boats get. Full but you, know to put this into, perspective, right during the worst for, trade the worst parts of THE covid lockdowns the year and a year drop was only twenty, Percent so and twenty percent is the number that's been that's been being spread around the media for like what roughly the drop looks like for some companies

is larger than. Others and, again the, tariff we still haven't even seen the actual shocks of the tariffs, yet and we're already seeing a decline in experts From china that is like again around the level of the. Lockdowns and and you, KNOW i think like people remember like the kind of unhinged shit that that, caused, right and

that's something that always only going to. Intensify and the other part of, this right is that the strategies right now for how this is being dealt with is moving Through, vietnam moving Through. Cambodia but if you remember the rates from the original sort of like turf tariffs From Liberation, day, right like the terif On vietnam was like one hundred percent or some, shit it was like eighty. PERCENT i don't,

remember zap my. Head but like there's no actual viable strategy of just of ways you can route these goods through and it's been especially hitting the sort of drop shipping, companies, right like people Like temu and anything that relies on airfhrase just getting. Fucked and so this this is all just you, know just sort of rolling in the, background is just this logistics, crisis and it's it's it's also

an echoing. Crisis and this THING i actually want to close this section on is, That, like so the big issue with with these sort of empty, boats, right and these cancelations at boat, waters is that in order for it to be, profitable because all of these these shipping companies run on such low, margins, right they only barely survived the pandemic by taking out a series of just

like unhinged sort of like weird collateral based. Loans and in order for these companies to be, profitable they have to continuously keep on completely filling up.

to unless the entire thing is. Full so the supply chain disruptions that we are going to see from, this as this sort of escalus and as this, continues and especially in a few months if the liberation dataies go back into, effect are, Catastrophic and we really, like it's just what it's this. Way you can hear the, thunder you can see the, lightning but the storm hasn't hit, yet and it is going to and when it, DOES

i don't. KNOW i was trying to do a poetic thing about how we're all going to get fucking, drenched but we're. Fucked it's going to be unbelievably. Bad and the only process right now inside of the administration that doesn't involve like some kind of mobilization is, like, again Is leutnik winning this fucking intra intra administration political battle With? Navarro so, woo, well pre order Your nintendo switch too right.

Come i'd like to talk a little bit about the student crackdowns For palestine, protests kind of in a different way like we've, discussed LIKE ice going after and detaining and deporting and taking away visas and green, cards so unrelated to that side of. It on the morning Of, Wednesday april twenty, third THE fbi served multiple search war in Southeast, michigan presumably related To palestine protests and encampments

from the past. Year there's also some reporting of law enforcement activity in other states Like, pennsylvania But i'm still waiting to confirm. That the press secretary for The Michigan

Attorney general confirms investigators executed search warrants for three. Homes he said that people were briefly detained during the execution of these, warrants but they were all eventually, released and he, noted quote there is no immigration enforcement angle to the execution of these search warrants, unquote so these people aren't being investigated BY ice to get deported. Necessarily this is seemingly for other protest. ACTIVITY a Pro palestine student group

says that these rates happened at around eight. Am. Quote early this, morning police AN fbi agents rated for residences of The university Of michigan Pro palestine, protesters refusing to show. Warrants they seized all electronics and a number of personal. Belongings. Quote let's close this episode by returning to my Most Stephen Colbert Skibbity biden, Segment Stinky, musk which is still

the worst Name i've come up. With Last, Tuesday Elon musk said that quote working for the government to get the financial house in order is mostly done, Unquote So musk is moving closer to stepping back FROM doge this, may around the time that his special Government employee designation

is set to. Expire reporting From Washington post claims That musk is growing tired of the vicious and unethical attacks from the left and that is kind of dragging on, him with other reports suggesting That musk is annoying Other cabinet members and administration officials more Than trump. Himself in, fact just This, wednesday a few hours before, Recording musk And, bessett we're having a pretty intense shouting match in The White.

House going, Forward musk says that he plans to work for the government about one to two days a week for the remainder of The trump presidency so that he can quote make sure that the waste and fraud that we've stopped does not come roaring.

week or else be. Fired directive has essentially sputted out senior officials do not comply with the core aspects of the. Directive it was never really, enforced and The Trump office Of Personal management later said that this was voluntary and THAT opium officials may have never actually ever read those

response emails at. All though a small number of agencies are still requiring compliance with this, mandate and in some fun, News tesla stock just continues to, decline dropping to half its peak from Last december and Anti testla vandalism potentially spiking the cost Of tesla. Insurance tesla had a just disastrous earnings call This, Tuesday april twenty, second showing That tesla profits have fell seventy one percent over the first

three months of the. Year the total revenue was decreased nine percent compared to twenty twenty, four with car sales revenue dropping twenty percent compared to a year. Earlier The TESLA cfo stated that quote the negative impact of vandalism and unwarranted hostility towards our brand and our people had an impact in certain markets. Unquote in a company statement before this earnings, Call tesla claimed that quote, unquote a

changing political sentiment could impact demand for their. Product musk announced that he would be shifting his attention back To tesla and that His doge time allocation will quote unquote drop.

Significantly musk talked tariffs on this earnings call and tried to carefully like not Bash, trump whilst stating concerns over the high, tariffs saying, Quote i've been on the record many times as SAYING i believe lower tariffs are generally a good, idea but this decision is fundamentally up to the elected representative of the, people being The president of The United. States so you, Know i'll continue to advocate for lower, tariffs but that's ALL i can.

to sell cars. Totally and so each like subsequent cycle of people not buying cars is also destroying their carbon credit, subsidies which is like this sort of like spiraling like cash crisis. Thing so you, know, look Zero tesla sales as, possible we can keep driving.