It Could Happen Here Weekly 196

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This is it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. One place that it is happening right now is Washington, d C, where Trump has undergone a quasi military takeover of the city. And to discuss this, I'm joined by bridget Todd, DC resident gare So.

I was on the podcast a few months ago talking about Trump's history of threats to DC and that has really all come to a head. So I'm really happy to be sitting down with you to talk about it.

It has been a rough few days here in DC.

I mean if I am coming off like I sound tired or weird or stressed, it's because I do feel those things.

That's been a lot of feelings. Most of it.

I just hate watching Donald Trump get up in front of America and straight lie about my city and my home. A place like DC that you know where I'm from, It's where it's met most of my life. It's pretty difficult to have the national conversation be about what a bombed out shithole my home is. So I sort of wanted to get into the basics of what's going on and what I think it all means for everyone, not just people in DC. So by now you've probably seen that.

He's also sending in national guard from other states.

To do this.

Trump evoked what's called Section seven forty of DC's Home Rule Act, which allows for the president to take over MPD for forty eight hours with possible extensions up to thirty days in times of emergencies. I'm kind of putting emergency in quotes because the emergency that he is saying is crime. But we'll get into why that doesn't really hold water in a moment. So I really can't overstate, like, how on precedented this is. No president has ever done this before.

Yeah, no, I somewhat relate to your pain here of your city suddenly being thrust into national spotlight as Trump sends in you know, military style police, and I guess a version although with very different methods justifications happened to my density Portland, Oregon in twenty twenty, which I'm sure most people listening are familiar with. It's very similar reporting on how it's burned to the ground. It is only

In some ways, yes, to be clear, because DC is not a state, it is unique from any other place in the country, and that the president kind of does have more authority over DC than he would have other places. And so yeah, he definitely this is definitely a federalization of our police department. In terms of it being a larger takeover of DC, We're not there yet. This is something that he has definitely threatened. This is something that

No, that's always the first step. Like, as soon as you take control of the enforcement mechanism, then no one really is able to stop you from doing other things.

Yeah, in order to revoke home rule, it would take an Act of Congress, which this Congress seems more than willing to do whatever Trump wants.

So that's something to keep in mind. Yeah, I think that.

For residents of DC, I think the changes have been so stark in the last just couple of forty eight hours that I think it's very important to keep in mind what could be coming down the pike and definitely be aware of it. But you know, residents need to know what this means for them and US today. And I think that, like it's is really important to like

I think eventually it is kind of became like a point of pride and more like an absurd aspect which keeps like unwanted tourism down. I don't think it really

I mean, that's pretty much what's happening on my streets in DC. So about eight hundred and fifty officers and agents took part in this what they called massive law enforcement surge across DC, where they had between one hundred and two hundred soldiers out patrolling the streets like beat

That happened last night.

Well, Georgetown actually might be the most dangerous place in the city well in some ways, right if you thinking.

About like the kind of crime they're talking tough about, yes, or like the National Mall at qpm a weekday, places where it's like it don't even make sense for y'all to be posted up there. You know, there was a big display of force and arrests on my block just last night in the middle of the night, where we looked out the window and it was.

Car after car after car, order patrol.

They set up the lights, they made arrests, and my block is residential. So it's like places where it's like it doesn't even seem to be making sense. And that's why we know it's really not about crime. All of the stuff that Trump said about crime and his pressor, I mean, it was all just lies.

Like I guess I don't you tell anybody listening to this.

But like in case you are curious whether or not there's any credence to the fact, we're like, oh, well, is crime going up in DC?

That is not true, right.

So violent crebs have been going down the past two years in DC consistently.

Absolutely, So, it is true that DC did have a spike in crime in twenty twenty three, but since then crime is going down. If you watched that press conference, he threw out a lot of stats about how crime is going in the wrong direction by every measure, that's simply not true. He said that in twenty twenty three,

It absolutely was.

We absolutely know what crime in DC looked like in the year two thousand and beyond. And so if There's one thing people might know about DC is that in the eighties and the nineties we were hit hard, but the crack epidemic crime was genuinely very high.

The city's own crime statistics, which.

We did collect from the seventies, eighties and nineties when the population in DC was smaller, show that there was much more higher numbers of homicides and murders.

So that's not just a lie.

It's also a weird, obvious lie, and one that when I watched the press or I almost didn't catch.

It.

Wasn't until I sat that and went through the notes and I was like, oh, this is not just a lie. This is like a weird, glaring lie. I can't believe. I like, I guess I said that to say, there are so many lies being thrown out in a short amount of time. When they're all washing over you, it's kind of hard to catch them one by one. But then when you actually sit down, you're like, wow, oh, this was just bullshit.

Yeah, that's the intention. That's the what Steve Bennen calls like muzzle velocity. You have to shoot out these things constantly, one after another, so that it's impossible to actually hone in and quote unquote debunk each and every one, because by the time you're doing that, they've already moved on to fifteen new things. You can never keep up with it.

That's right. We formally called chocolate City.

We're more like a latte city today, but yeah, we we have a heavily black and brown population here.

Yeah, that's that's what Trump's actually like focusing on. That's actually what he's doing. I feel like that's that should be pretty clear to anyone who's like familiar with like crime panic narratives and how they've been strategically deployed throughout the past twenty five years and you know, thirty forty years of the country.

Yeah, I mean, I don't see how somebody could see what's happening and see the way that he is clearly like, like even at that press or the list of cities he was planning on going to next, Chicago, Baltimore, It's like, okay, heavily black cities with black political leadership and black mayor.

Oh, Oakland, this is very clear what's going on? Yeah? Interesting, interesting choice, buddy, Yeah, Like what do all these places have in common?

Right?

One of the things I've seen people say is that this whole thing is about the attack on the former DOGE staffer known as big Balls.

Big Ball I think it's that's his technical term. Yes, possibly to receive the Presidential Medal of I think freedom.

I think he got a medal. I think it happened.

It's quite possible, So we should show big Balls some respect for his.

Struggles, I guess.

Yeah.

I mean it's I never thought I would see the day where I'd be like reporting on a story happening in the city and talking about somebody named Big Balls.

But here we go. Really, you didn't see this coming.

You didn't see.

Someone of my being go cardcare. For a podcast that I host about local DC news and issues called City Cast DC, I interviewed Mark C. Graves, who was like a long time DC reporter, and I said, Oh, is there any truth to the idea that this attack on Big Balls is?

Like?

What was the impetus to all this?

That Elon Musk was like, Trump, you need to federalize DC's police department because of what happened to my former staffer. And I understand why people where that narrative was coming from. But he really pointed out something, which is that you know, Trump has been talking about taking over d police department for a very long time. He referenced it during his first administration a little bit a lot less than he did it the second time around. He really dialed it

So well, the Big Balls thing alleged carjacking of Big Balls, I will say this.

You know those stories where you're like, we're gonna get more information about this, so it's best to just wait. A I don't know anything. I don't have any special details, but like my senses, this is one of those situations where it's like, you know, first the story was I was with a girlfriend in her car.

We were carjacked by two unarmed teens.

Then Elon Musk, super spreader of misinformation that he is, was like, oh, he was attacked while trying to rescue an elderly woman.

Like I just have seen enough about crime and DC. I am.

I'm looking forward to hearing more information about what actually went down there.

I'll just put it that.

Way if that makes sense with mister big Balls. With mister big Balls, I guess mister Balls. I guess big is the first Mister Balls. Please, mister Balls is my father. So yeah, Like, I think.

The Big Balls thing might have been very convenient timing or like a good excuse to actually move forward. But I think narratives that Big Balls got attacked and now Trump is taking over MPDE, I think that like doesn't really tell the whole story, which is that this has been a long time coming. This has been something that Trump has been like obsessed with for quite some time, even going back from before his second administration.

And there's there's been like a media campaign in the past few months of specifically taking like public trendsit robbery videos and making them super vi role of like teens who will like steal like designer clothes on public transit, Yeah,

That's why the big narrative continues to really be so sticky.

Ooh, I don't like that. Yeah, I don't mean it how it sounds.

But like, it doesn't matter if you have statistics from the FBI saying that crime is going down whatever, whatever, when you if you have a visceral image of like a bloodied big balls.

Beaten on the street, right like and so I think that it's it's really.

Interesting how and I guess I'll just say it, how easily manipulated people are, yeah, and how they're able to go against the facts when they are confronted with an image of like teens robbing a CVS or like oh, like yeah, like eluted out CBS totally because that is

No, and that's why it's almost kind of fruitless to go about that strategy at this point. And like, I don't know how to approach this, And I think it's also worth mentioning, like you're we are not immune to

Yeah, it's true, and it almost doesn't even make sense to like come back the idea that this is about crime. But I know it's not about crime because one, the Trump administration recently made very drastic cuts to DC security funding, and so if he was really very invested in crime and DC seems like something that his administration would not have done.

Also, something that our mayor, who I do want.

To talk about, has said is that, as you were sort of alluding to earlier, federal agents and military personnel are not the people who are going to be useful when it comes to DC like street crime. These are people who probably aren't even informed about DC's local ordinances and laws. Why would they be right, And so these are not people whose jobs it is to be out engaging with civilians about quality of life crimes like open containers or drinking on sidewalks.

I saw a.

Pretty viral video of the police going up and stopping somebody for he says, smoking a joint on his porch.

In DC, you are allowed to possess marijuana.

But he also was like, just so you know, Trump is cracking down on all of these quality of life crimes. So you can't drink a beer on your portion anymore, that's incorrect in the District of columb But you absolutely can drink alcohol on your private property outside.

And it's like, well, how would he know. He's not even from here.

He's a federal agent, So like, yeah, these are not people who are trained or skilled in combating the kind of civilian level street crime that we're seeing them do.

This is just not an appropriate use of these people.

And so the thing that kind of gets me is that for the amount of money that we are spending on having federal agents deal with low level street crime like per MPD and per the DOJ's own statistics, the kind of crimes that they have been combating this week are things like open container fair evasions. It was like, yeah, you need you need an FBI agent to deal with this.

And do this.

It's not actually about lowering crime. The reason why they would never want to house people's because they don't actually want to. They don't want homeless people to live good lives. They want to exercise power. That's the primary motivator. And not only can bringing an out of state police be like inconvenient, it can have lethal consequences, right because they do not know the areas that they're policing, They do not know the people in those areas. They don't understand

It depends on if you're talking about the event or the like entity the entity.

When I was at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin last year, I responded to the scene of a police shooting where police from out of state who were brought in for the convention. We're policing outside of the area the convention and shot and killed a homeless black man because they did not understand where the homeless people have their encampments, how they solve disputes, how people can

I did an interview with a local community organizer in DC and they told me pretty much the same thing, that there is an aspect of trust and relationship building that goes into not just like solving crimes, but combating crimes before they start, right, Like, there is a level of deep relationship building and trust building that has to be in effect there, and that is what actually can some time times make communities safer. But it comes to

Right.

And so if we're genuinely interested in buildings are for communities, bringing in all of these outside military and federal personnel is simply not how you do it.

That's how I know it's bullshit. They don't actually care about.

Any of this, and like it is, it is sort of crazy making because I feel like they want us spinning out about all of this stuff, all of this bullshit that they're spinning, which fucking guilty is charged for me this week is all I've been doing. But you know, it's just it's this. They're so effective at the spin and the manipulation.

No, I'm one of the for Fox News hosts who somehow has a position in government Heath. No, it was another one. No, No, there is another.

This is which one?

It was one of the ones who looks like you're evil? Aunt oh, Gnian Pierro, Yes, Oh my god, I'm glad that we could figure that out based on that description.

That's all you had to say.

But she was specifically asked like, what are you gonna do to address the root cause of crime? And she says, we don't want to. We're not going to. That's not what we're actually focusing on. We're focusing on just like eliminating crime through like force, through intimidation, and not even actually eliminating crime, just just just exercising power, which is what they're actually trying to say. And that's that's the whole point of this.

Yes, and it's not just crime written large through force. It is crime in cities that are run by democrats and how are heavily black and brown populations, because you don't see them going into white commun unities.

That have crime, which white communities do have crime.

You don't see them going into like cities where they have Republican mayors where crime is also quite bad. No, that's not even that's not even like part of the conversation. It is very clear what they are saying. This is an attack.

It's about power.

Yeah, this is a show of power to communities that we don't like. And I have to say something about this, which is that you know, when on this first happened, when I was interviewing that longtime reporter Mark Seagraves, something that he told me that really scared me was that the administration is doing this entirely legally and by the book.

He was like, Oh, it's clear that they are following every letter of the law, to the.

Point where the first statement out of our mayor's office was that they were not challenging this takeover of MPD because they did not feel like they had any kind of legal grounds to do so, which is grim That really tells me that they have got their act together. There was a time where people were like, Oh, they're just gonna do things and see what sticks and see what, you know, see what gets challenged in court, see what

What has the reaction been like from Lake City government?

Ugh?

I mean, I will say I came on this podcast a while ago, and I would say, like, I don't want to say I defended our mayor Muriel Bowser, but I did want to say, like, she is in a position that no other election official in the country is in, where she has to sort of play nice with a madman.

To avoid this from happening, to avoid this from happening.

So my point is now, I mean, it really shows you the futality of trying to make concession with a fascist.

Right. What's the point.

Yeah, because the thing that we were trying to avoid, the thing that all of these little appeasements and concessions.

Were meant to avoid, has happened.

To be clear, Trump has not taken over DC entirely, and home rules still stands, and so the very worst outcome has not happened yet. But this is pretty damn bad, and so part of me is like, what did all those concessions get you? And today, just this morning, she has totally flipped her tune on this. She actually flew to mar A Lago to see Trump yesterday and she came back saying, well, maybe having more law enforcement in

And I'm coming out of it thinking I don't think that.

She is fighting for us like the way that I would want her to be positioning herself in this moment, I'm.

Not seeing her do.

And the reality is, unfortunately the mayor of DC doesn't really have a lot of power and protection. She does when you when you compare that to somebody like Gavin Newsom, who when Trump sent the National Guard into LA knows that he has like the power of two senators behind him, right like our mayor doesn't have that. And it just really made clear when it comes to protecting DC.

We're really on our own. We're really all we have.

We don't really have a lot of power.

We are really depending on folks like you.

Care to get the word out to people who do have elected officials that they can call and advocate, because like.

There's really nobody to call.

And I will say I will say this, if the worst thing happens and DC's home Rule is overturned, which would be a disaster, Like I should come back on the show and talk about what that would look like.

If that happens, DC will have no one.

The only people who will be in charge of how DC is run is Trump and a small handful of people that he would personally appoint to be the commissioner of DC. So the last time that DC did not have home Rule, it was the only people who were in charge were the President and I think it was three commissioners that he personally appointed. None of these people lived in DC other than the President who lived in

So anybody who thinks that.

That is a reasonable way to run a city, oh my god, wake up.

Well I am not thrilled about the idea of commissioner big balls because that would happen. You know that, I know. And it's funny you mentioned Newsome, and Newsom was another guy who was trying to make concessions with Trump, specifically around like trans sports.

Oh my god, don't even get me started.

And he tried to, you know, make make those sort of like concessions and like roll back some aspects of supporting trans people in schools and trans kids. And then Trump's Department of Education still went after California schools, so like, yeah, no matter what concessions you give, they will still go after you. Earlier, you mentioned there was like a rest in your on your block last night, Like how how is this affected daily life for you and other are the residents of like DC?

So far it has been grim.

You know, we've seen border patrol, DA, FBI, National Guard just walking the streets. And again, like something about DC is that in August pretty much everybody leaves towns.

What's a bit of a ghost town.

There is nothing that justifies the massive disruption in city services that has happened.

On my street last.

Night they had a row of Border Patrol SUVs blocking traffic for genuinely no reason. Like The level to which to say are they are purposely disrupting the flow of city life cannot be overstated. And you know, I want to make it clear also, this is, as you said,

Yeah, finding someone who has no money?

Yeah.

And DC has a long history of having an issue with the unhoused community. We do not have enough shelters to accommodate people, and even if we did not, everybody's gonna want to go to a shelter. And so this has been an issue long before Trump was ever in DC. And it does take some complexity and thoughtfulness to solve it, not just going in and removing people by brute force, Like that is the absolute worst thing that you can be doing for this.

No, I mean that that relates to Trump's like anti vagrancy executive order from a few weeks ago, where he wants to lock homeless people up in like mental hospitals and jails and like like like forcibly so and change change the rules for how how shelters work, how shelters can get funding mandatory like drug treatments, and yeah, really actually just trying to like involuntarily commit people into civil

Yes, and there was also an ice raid at the home Depot out in Northeast this week. Basically, I do think that first and foremost this is an attack on DC's black, brown, immigrant, and unhoused community. But you know, I've seen images of empty bars and empty restaurants where Ice and border patrol are inside the place.

Yeah, why would you want to go out? So if there's a fucking like the military parading around.

Yes, it's fucking up the vibes right, Like that's I will say.

Like so in addition to the attacks on these vulnerable communities, like if you want to have a community where people feel safe to go out, they want to spend money, they want to like in joy of the.

City, the vibes are terrible.

This is this is just everything that makes DC great and a good place to live in a place that people want to come and spend time and and start their families. This kind of show of force goes against that and threatens that. It really does threat like DC is a particular place. It's like why this is my home. This kind of stuff really threatens our way of life in ways that are just.

It really is just sad.

I'm not sure if you have like examples like what people are trying to do to cope with this or try to like like stand their ground in their community. I guess, But like how are people like channeling their frustration right now?

Well, there was a very viral video of somebody throwing a sub sandwich at a military personnel on us to eat.

So well, that's a start. As long as we if we can get fifty thousand people with sub sandwiches, we might be onto something.

Hero DC needs.

So that's one literally the hero DC needs. Yeah, I see what you did there.

Yeah, I would say, so there are I feel grateful that there are organizations in DC, like local organizations that were preparing for this, and so organizations like Free DC. I spoke to one of their representatives earlier this week about what they're doing, and they're really focused on giving residents resources and so they're running cop watching trainings.

That's good. That's good.

They're making sure that.

Folks know that their rights have not changed, know their rights if an agent comes up to you to talk to you. They're making sure people know what they do and don't have to say in those situations, which I think is important. People should definitely check out Free DC. They've been around since the sixties or they have been

I hate that.

We have gotten this narrative that cities are bad, and that goes against our shared understanding of this country where cities are good. If you live in a city, don't let Trump turn you against city life. Don't let Trump turn you against cities. People want to be in cities. Cities are good, cities are safe, cities are cool to live, and people want to be in the city. If people didn't want to live in DC, my rent wouldn't be so goddamn high. Right, people want to be here for

So that's why I think everyone should travel to Let's all go to the capitol, put on some put on some masks, wave some flags, and just get in there to show could we could take it over, we can take the city back. Joe Biden, twenty twenty eight. Let's go.

Yeah. I mean, I did see this interview on News Nation where I think it was Mehdi Hassan was talking to some shithead and he was like, oh, if Trump cares about crime so much, why did he pardon a bunch of January sixth attackers who threatened and attacked law enforcement?

And it's like, oh, he would be.

The interviewer was just like, oh, come on, come on, you want to talk about that, come on.

And it's like, okay, I.

Thought tough on crime. Huh, tough on crime?

Okay, No, it's it's it's crime with three ellipses, not the actual category of crime exactly crime wink wink.

Yeah.

It's like we know what they're what they're trying to say, but Honestly, just talking to you about this has made me feel a lot better.

I've been raging all week.

So this is the first time that I feel like I've actually like gotten it all out.

So thank you for talking to me about it.

Yeah, no, we will. We will certainly keep up with what's happening in d C with you know how long National Guard's going to be there, how long this this federalization lasts. Maybe they'll eliminate all crime within thirty days and things will go back to normal. Who knows.

I mean the day that he took over there was over.

There was a shooting like an hour or two later, So I was like, oh, at job, we're going.

To handle this well, I guess not, but no, we will. We will keep up with this as well as Trump's promise is to go further and expand to five other cities. So thank you for sharing your your thoughts and experiences as a resident of d C.

Bridget, Thank you for having me, and yeah, like, if you're out there in d C, stay safe, keep hope alive.

We're all we got. Where else can people find you on the internet, Bridget? Besides, you know, on the on the steps of the Capitol waving an American flag.

Yeah in a mask.

Yeah.

You can find me at my podcast.

I have a podcast on iHeartRadio called There Are No Girls on the Internet. I have a podcast about local DC news and issues called Citycast DC. You can also find me on Instagram at bridget rain d C, on TikTok at bridget rain DC, or on YouTube.

And there Are No Girls on the Internet.

Cheers.

I'm Michael Phillips, an historian and the author of a book about racism in Dallas called White Metropolis, and the co author of a recently published book about the eugenics movement in Texas called The Purifying Knife.

And I'm Stephen Monicelli. I'm an investigator reporter in Dallas, where I contribute to a variety of publications as well as Cool Zone Media. I cover political extremism in Texas and beyond. Elon Musk has dominated the news since the twenty twenty four presidential campaign, and for a lot of reasons. There's a billionaire's flirtation with neo Nazi politics. There's his

On May third of this year, on the South Texas coast of the Gulf of Mexico, people went to the voting booth on a peninsula called Boca Chica. They voted to turn their one and a half square mile patch of unincorporated land into a city called Starbase. Almost all of the voters were employees of musk SpaceX Rocket Company. So are the candidates elected to govern Texas newest city. But Musk is clearly the power behind the throne.

Meanwhile, in Bastrup County near Austin in central Texas, Musk gobbled up local real estate in loosely governed unincorporated lands. That's where, in addition to Starbase, he's working to create another company town he calls Snailbrook. Many Bascht rep presidents say Musk's businesses are poisoning the water, air, and soil

Speaking of capitalism will be back after a few words from our sponsors. Roughly between eighteen eighty in the mid nineteen thirties, an astounding twenty five hundred company towns dotted the American landscape.

A product of Gilded Age greed.

At best, these corporate planned communities represented paternalistic experiments of mind control. At their worst, they became miniature police states. In Steinway Village in New York, where not surprisingly, workers manufactured Steinway pianos, Paulman, Illinois, where employees made train cars, and Hershey's Pennsylvania, which was, of course, a chocolate manufacturing center.

Chad Pearson is an historian of American labor at the University of North Texas, and he's the author of a noted book called Capitalism's Terrorists. Klansmen, lawmen, and employers in the long nineteenth century. We talked to him about the rise and fall of company towns in the mid eighteen hundreds to the early twentieth century. Could you explain how company towns got started in the United States and the motives of the businessmen who started them.

Certainly, so, really, I think we can identify three periods, three phases. So the first phase would be we might associate with the so called Lowell Girls in Lowell, Massachusetts, which began in the eighteen twenties and continued into the subsequent decades. These were young women girls and basically, you know, they lived on the campus the town. The boss would decide when they would work and when they would eat,

So quite a few.

So whatever period we're talking about, these places where infamous for management's use of surveillance and power. This is designed really to fundamentally control folks, which round expression again in homes, workplaces, and churches.

You would have to sign contracts.

So in a place like mining towns in West Virginia, you'd have to sign a contract that gave the boss the authority to evict labor activists or people, you know, workers who might be involved in trying to improve their conditions by fighting back, or they would be evicted for so called undesirable behavior, again that generally involved things like union organizing.

Pearson described these company towns as many dictatorships in which fighting for better conditions could result in harsh retaliation, and in which ministers that were hired by the company and a church built by the company bosses fed workers a steady stream of propaganda.

This happened in places like New England textile mills to coal mining areas in Alabama and West Virginia.

Well might happened.

You'll say you're you're active in a union, or you're resisting your boss. Right, the boss or his underlings might send in mind guards and say you and your family get out, throw the stuff, their furniture on the street, and there would be no no accountability, no way to you know, address that that problem. You'd also have company towns. You'd have a religious you'd have preachers who would preach

A key way that company towns control workers was by not paying them an actual American dollars paper certificates called script. They could only be spent at company owned stores. This gave the company monopoly power over what their workforce bought.

A twenty five pounds sack of flower costs two fifty at the company's store. It costs only one ninety elsewhere. Right, So this was a way for companies to sort of corner the market, if you will, right, they could jack up prices.

You were basically a slave to the system.

George Pullman, who established the company that made luxury railroad cars, created a company town in Illinois in eighteen eighty one, Pullman presented his experiment to the world as a utopia. The workers' houses there had natural gas and running water, which was not the norm at the time. Some even had indoor plumbing. The town had retail shops and well supplied markets, and tourists visited it as a supposed ideal community of the future.

In spite of the apparent shininess of Pullman Illinois, the relationship between Pullman and his employees turned violent in eighteen ninety four. A is doctor Pearson explains.

So Pullman, George Pullman, began creating this utopian community in eighteen eighty Okay, that's shortly after this massive nationwide strike in eighteen seventy seven of railroad workers. So a lot of bosses in the aftermath of these massive confrontations were like, Okay, we've got to do something. We've got to do something to solve what they called the labor problem, the labor question.

Company town in the nation.

And he did, I mean, let's give credit where credit is due some things that did improve the conditions for employees. So he had a company doctor. He oversaw good school system funded athletic programs a company banned and he modeled this on a company town outside of Bradford, England. So what we see is, you know, the company towns do not originate in the United States. They are sort of a phenomenon that we see across the industrialized world. But

No, it's not right.

And so it was also pretty expensive to live there. Residents had to spend something like thirty percent of their money on rent, and when they saved enough money an impossible thing to do. Often when they did save that money, they would they would get out.

Pullman's experiment in welfare capitalism came crashing down when the United States sank into an economic depression that lasted from eighteen ninety three to eighteen ninety seven, at one point three million people, or about twenty percent of the country's workforce, could not find jobs. Hunger and suicide became rampant as hard times dragged on, and Pullman laid off hundreds of workers and slashed wages by thirty three percent.

During this time, residents of the company town in Illinois struggled to pay rent at the Pullman owned housing, where management refused the lower prices. Eugene Debs, who would soon emerge as the leader of the Socialist Party of America and would served five times as that party's presidential nominee, led one hundred and fifty thousand member American Railway Union the ARU, stage a strike calling for a rollback in pay cuts in a reduction rents at the company housing.

President Grover Cleveland dispatched twelve thousand troops to crush the uprising and reopen the rail lines. Federal marshalls shot two strikers to death in Kensington, Illinois, not far from Chicago, while authorities arrested Dabbs and put him in prison for defying the court order by continuing the strike in a stop to workers, the House and Senate unanimously passed a bill creating what we now know today as Labor Day.

Later on, in jail, using depths becomes radicalized, reading marks runs for president. A few times after that, bottom line workers lost a strike, but Pullman's experiments soon ended. The Illinois Supreme Court rule that George Pullman's ownership of the community was in violation of its charter and dismantled the

By around the end of the eighteen hundreds, about three percent of the American population lived under the almost complete control of their corporate masters. Meanwhile, an extensive network of spies filled company towns. These corporate agents posed as fellow workers, bartenders, mailmen, or just another customer at the store. They reported to management any e mail content who complained about working hours

Let me read you an anecdote from Vandergriff, Pennsylvania. Vandergrift, Pennsylvania is a company pound not far from Pittsburgh. It's a steel town. And in July nineteen oh nine, during a strike against the American Sheet and Tinplay Company, the company's superintendent was a guy named Oscar Lindquist. He led a mob of hundreds to a hotel in the nearby town of Apollo, where the union organizers were staying. So there's an effort to build union membership in this company town.

The harshness of company towns inspired worker resistance, including what came to be known as the Colorado Coalfield War. We'll hear more about that, and a tragedy that came to be known as the Ludlow Massacre. After this break sponsored by some companies, one of the bloodiest confrontations between a company militia and striking workers in American history took place

Instead of negotiating, Rockefeller assembled a private army of local sheriffs, deputies, and private detectives. The militia armed itself with a motorized gatling gun that Rockefeller's goons named the Death Special. The nation recoiled in horror when on April twentieth, nineteen fourteen, militia troops attacked a company miner's tent colony. They were living in the tent colony because that had been kicked out of company housing. During the armed assault, Rockefeller's troops

The folk singer Woody Guthrie immortalized the horrific scene at Ludlow in his ballad the Ludlow Massacre.

You struck a man in the blaze it started.

You pulled the triggers of your gabling guns.

I made around for the children, for the farwells of me.

Thirteen children died from your guns.

About two hundred people in all died in what came to be called the Colorado Coalfield War. So we asked doctor Pearson about the long term impact of the Ludlow massacre and what happened to company towns in the subsequent years.

So basically, on the morning of April twenty at nineteen fourteen, guardsmen who were aligned with the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, which is owned by John D. Rockefeller, attacked this camp of strikers, mineworkers strikers, ultimately killing twenty one people, including eleven children. This brutality, this brutality lasted for fourteen hours.

As you mentioned at the beginning of the episode, company towns never completely died, and they're making a bit of a disturbing comeback via Rockefeller's successor as the world's richest man. South African native and Texas transplant Elon Musk. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has been a big ally of Musk at least until his nasty split with Trump over the president's

COVID nineteen restrictions in California during the pandemic and rage, Musk for a time defied state law. He derided California as defined by quote overregulation, over litigation, and over taxation, poop on the sidewalk, and scorn. In contrast, Texas stood out for its lax environmental and labor standards. As Abbot bragged to the Fox Business Channel.

A need that Elon had with speed.

He does everything fast, and this would have taken five, maybe ten years to accomplish in California. I told him that Texas moves at the speed of business. He was able to complete a mal long gigafactory in a year and a half. That is unheard of, probably not replicable in any other state.

Whether Bastor residents liked Musk or not, it soon became clear that he was making a very large local footprint. Bastrip County has always been as for its beauty. This is how Bastro sold itself to tourists, businesses, and potential residents in the early two thousands.

Next time you're on the way between Houston and Austin or points in between, you want to stop here in Bastrov. We've got a pretty little place here along the Colorado River, a place with charm and great natural beauty. We're the home of the lost times. So cross the bridge into the old town and have a look. We've been growing here since eighteen thirty two, and growing in a good way, a way that looks to the future and that preserves

There's a heavy price for moving at Greg Abbott's beat a business. However, chap Ambrose, a landowner in Bashtrop County, thirty three miles southeast of Austin, said that he admired Musk for being a high tech titan. He was excited when the billionaire announced he was going to move part of his business empire to the small, mostly agricultural county. Ambrose describes his feelings about musk arrival in his YouTube series Keep Bashstrop Boring.

The weird part here is I'm actually an Elon Musk fan. I have my Tesla cybertruck reservation here from November of twenty nineteen, and SpaceX's Starlink, their satellite service. I've also signed up for last year.

All of Bashtrop's natural and architectural splendor, however, is in danger since Musk came to town. In Texas counties have even less ability to protect the environment than these cities, and Musk, hat strategically places operation on land will face lax local oversight. He used his fortune to buy about thirty five thousand acres of what was once farmland in Bastrop County, which is now headquarters for the Boring Company.

This purported worker utopia already has a Gilded Age style catch. If workers get fired by Musk Long, famous for his volatility and mass layoffs at his companies, they will only have a month to vacate their homes. And, as with the Gilded Age, much under the Snailbrook glitter is not gold. The town's playground, for instance, lack shade from the broiling summertime Central Texas heat, and much of the equipment is broken and made of inferior materials. The Monastery school initially

Musk once marketed himself as an environmental savior. His electric cars would supposedly save the planet from climate change. However, in Bashstrop County, he's a major polluter. The Boring company petitioned Texas for the right to pour one hundred and forty three thousand gallons of treated wastewater into the Colorado

There's a culture of secrecy and it seems they're actively trying to obscure the truth, not just from neighbors, but also are county officials. If you're going to prototype the world's fastest tunneling machine in minderborhood. Then I expect the most innovative and transparent safety systems to go alongside it. Why do they refuse to give direct answers? And why won't they put their promises in writing? Why do they refuse to follow the very minimal restrictions we have in

Transparency may have disappeared forever for residents. Amost other company town, one of most most lucrative companies, SpaceX, launches its rockets about twenty miles outside of Brownsville on the Texas Gulf Coast near the Mexican border. Most of the residents near the launch site, known as Boka Chica Village or Tehano's and many struggle economically. Lands and beaches are considered sacred by members of the Carazou called Mekrudo tribe of Texas.

When asked how soon flights would be going to the Moon or Mars, must talked about the necessary test flights that would need to take place first.

Most likely it's going to cover having at a Brownsvie location, because we've got a lot of land with nobody around, and so if it was.

Up, it's cool.

The people at Brownsville didn't agree that if a rocket ship blew up in their neighborhood it would be quote cool.

His comment is not sitting well with Gail McConaughey.

He's been out here before. He damn sure. I ought to know that he's seen the village. You gotta know that it's not a ghost home.

McConaughey and his wife have been living at Bukachka Village every winter for the past eleven years. He says he's offended that he and the other residents are considered nobody. It also raises questions, he adds, about how safe the launches will be in.

A rocket that size or any size that would go up, and who knows what might happen. It might start tipping the wrong direction. Who knows if something happened to the engines and explodes, that's cool when you're talking about there's lives here, that's a mile and a half away.

Kane's words were prophetic. In subsequent years, Musk's rockets did blow up, such as in April twenty twenty three, when a SpaceX special obliterated the concrete launch pad, leaving behind a massive crater. As Scientific American reported, quote, particular debris as well as concrete and steel shrapnel from the bosched launch scattered far and wide across the surrounding landscape, igniting

The skies over South Texas overnight, A massive fireball after a SpaceX rocket exploded during a static rocket test.

A ground test for an upcoming launch, the.

Ship thirty sixers blew up.

Ship thirty six ers blue up.

SpaceX, led by Elon Musk, said the Starship Rocket experienced a major anomaly while preparing for its tenth flight test, adding that all personnel are safe and there are no hazards to residents in surrounding communities. The explosion rattled nearby residents who posted videos on social media, one telling my San Antonio News quote, our whole neighborhood felt it. It shook all of our houses.

In spite of this record at Mayhem. On Saturday, May third, the Chika Village held an election on whether to incorporate as a city of Starbase. The proposal to create the state's newest city carried by a vote of two hundred and twelve to six. Nearly two thirds of the electorate lived near SpaceX's launch site. Overwhelmingly the voters were Musk employees. All three candidates elected to Starbas's New City Commission ran unopposed, and one without putting up a single campaign sign or

As The Texas Tribune has reported, the new city government increased control over the nearby public beach, revered by local indigenous people. Some local residents feel the creation of the company town gives them even less power to protect what's seen as a local treasure.

Starbase is only about one and a half square miles. It's, of course, the home of SpaceX, and the main goal is sending humans to Mars. According to the FAA, Starbas is aiming for twenty five rocket launches a year. But this is all coming with a bit of controversy, especially over access to the popular.

Boca Chica Beach.

Any SpaceX rocket launcher engine test requires closing a local highway to the beach, and some say Starbase is giving Musk too much control. People gathered at the beach Saturday night to protest.

They're just tearing it up and doing whatever they want because they want to gentrify. They want to be a city by themselves. When you gentify the land, you're gentrifying the soul of the people.

Juan Massias, the protester you just heard, is the chair of the Carazau called the Crudeo tribe of Texas. He told the Texas Tribune quote, these hills are sacred to us. They don't know the history of the land, and they're trying to erase that. Of course, Musk has a history as well, is one characterized by labor abuses.

Like the Robert Barons who ruled as emperors over their Gilded Age company towns. Musk has been accused of firing union organizers at his Austin gigafactory. Workers claim Musk either

Is highly unlikely that the state of Texas will require Musk to provide any transparency about his business practices. Governor Abbott recently refused the request of a media outlet, the Texas Newsroom, to release emails between him and Musk, claiming the extensive communication between the pair was quote intimate and potentially quote embarrassing and therefore not a public interest. With so much a Musk enterprise in the state, operating in company towns

I truly hope the borrowing company succeeds in its efforts. I think tunneling makes sense, and if they can improve traffic into Austin and around it, that'd be great. But you have to be better neighbors. Texas has strongly and owner rights and you can do pretty much what you want on your land. However, Texas law also says that we share the air and you share the groundwater with

The struggle against the absolute power wielded by the rulers of the Gilded Age's company towns led to actual battles with literal casualties on American soil. Doctor Pearson reminded us that the hard life and the Gilded Era, the era of company towns, represented an American norm rather than an exception, and because of Musk Teal and other modern robber barons, the battles fought in Pullman, Illinois and Ludlow, Colorado might have to be fought once again.

Some of you folks may be aware of Jefferson Cowie and Nick Salvatory's book, which he calls The Great Exception, and they argue that, you know, most of American history is like the guilded. Yeah, we had a forty to fifty year period from I don't know, the thirties the seventies when things were kind of better, right, you know what Blue Magas and Red magas alike like to celebrate, But the fact is, you know, there's things were pretty

I'm Michael Phillips, So you can find me on substack at doctor m Phillips two thousand and one, on Blue Sky and Facebook. Google my name and quote White Metropolis.

And I'm Stephen Wana Charlie. You can find me on Blue Sky, and I've got a Patreon and all those other things. Thank you for listening, and we hope that you found this delightful topic about Elon Musk's desire to bring back company towns informative. Thanks for listening.

Hello, hell helloo, and welcome to get up and here. I'm Andrew Siege otherwise doing this andresm on YouTube and I'm here.

With James, just James, and have a YouTube.

Well than just James, I mean, I love talking to you, so in more than just James to me.

Oh, thank you, Andrew. It's very sweet. I enjoyed these two. It's the phone for me.

Yeah, So I really I'd like to get into one of the hotter topics as of late. Not the heat, so that is a hot topic. But yeah, YEAHI Artificial intelligence.

Oh good, Yeah, my favorite thing.

Yeah, and more specifically the ways in which AI has contributed to and accentuated alienation and the capitalism and the state in the twenty first century. So that's a mouthful, but it's obviously very important.

Okay, Yeah, I like you so lot.

In my opinion, alienation with all its meaning is really is one of those words that you could really use to describe the current side guys, the experience of separation from yourself, from your work, from the products of your work, from your community, all these things both philosophical and material get wrapped up into this concept of alienation because it's both an experience, it's something that people feel internally, it describes the way that they see their lives, and it's

Yeah, it's I think alienation is like something we don't talk about enough. It's like the thing that ties together that despare the loneliness. The loneliness is is maybe like it's a way that capitalism has come to talk about alienation without acknowledging the capitalism is creating alienation. Every sort of developed state in the colonial core have a knowledge loneliness is a problem. Right, I saw Gavin Newsome was with launching a loneliness campaign. But like the system is

Are exactly exactly. It comes down to conditions. I mean, in particular, I think we see alienation manifest in most in our relationships, of course, and in our works. And it's been an issue for some decades now. And what I'm really intrigued by is, you know, this has been an issue for a while, but how is AI interacting with these issues? How is EI impacting the alienation that we already experience under the system.

Yeah, that's fascinating. I'm currently teaching a class at the community college to class about pre sixteen hundred history, and like, I teach a little bit every year, right, and every year I've seen what AI use. But this year this is fully blackpilled me, Like, I don't quite know how to describe the feelings I'm experiencing, I guess, but it's class I assigned like David Graeber, I assigned Jim Scott.

Yeah, it's a it's a really big issue, and it's only cruent, you know, as EI expands, I mean, it's not so much the focus of this episode, but it is something that I wanted to touch on. You know, people used to be doing fine without it, used to be able to function without it three years ago, and now you talk to them and they can't live without it.

Yeah, I've heard of this.

So it's just one one big puppet schew, you know, one one big fast god.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, one big charade, which you know, to an extent, education has always just been that, right, one big fast. But there are things that are redeemable about it. And I'm just talking about teaching now, and I'll stop

That's a dynamic, yeah.

And it's an important dynamic. Like the function of the university is to fucking turn out people with stem degrees who can go on and make shitty apps we don't need. It's to prepare us to be citizens in the community, exactly, and we are failing at that. And yes, intead, I'm just great and chet GPT all day know.

Yeah, And that's that's a big piece of the puzzle that we end up missing. Because the way in which the sort of dynamics and the connections that you would get from the university class or I'm beyond just sort of connections in general is lacking in an alienated rule and it's worsened by you know, the instruction of the eye. I managed to complete most of my education, most of

You know?

Yeah, it's the world that super rich people already live in. One of the reasons that the gulf between the rest of us and the super rich, like the really you know, incredibly wealthy people. Part of that is that no one says no to a lot of those people, and that's why they exclusively end up socializing with each other. Right, Like they're they're they're surrounded by nothing but affirmation.

Right.

One of the things we see was Trump, right, is that like, if there is a reality that he doesn't like, he manifests his own reality. He just speaks things and expects them to be accepted as truths.

Right.

Growing up, my dad worked for a lot of extremely wealthy people, and so I've interacted with them, and like, there's a lot of people who just aren't used to hearing, know, or why, but not a lot that there is a number of them, And like I think when you see I was just thinking about it. The behavior that you know Trump now asserting with the Epstein thing is like it is made up, right, and it's a hoax, and

Yeah.

The dates are called rush yeah, right, And people are doing the same with with wealthy people, right, They just want to interact with them so so they can siphon off some of the resources that those people have accumulated. Like it's not maybe it's not the same. I think that still humans interacting with wealthy people is distinct from an AI interacting with humans, but it sort of gives us a window into what the impact of that being most of your human interaction over time.

And.

As we speak of wealthy people. I suppose we should look at the other way in which AI is intersecting with alienation, right, because you know, for the current narrative has been about you know, AI is taking jobs, and before then it's about automation was taking jobs. AI is you know, a form of automation, and before that it was just innovations in general, just steps in some technological

Yeah, it's very like it has a very formulaic nature when a human does it. It's funny when I think about copywriting, right, Like you can see that people have identified the completely generic nature of it, because occasionally you'll have like brands who do it in a non formulaic way and briefly see success from it, like just by having some element of humanity in it.

Yeah, like Wendy is when they did that for a little while. Then yeah, then every brand to copy that method and then it became steel and yeah, yeah.

Someone wist sometimes like puncture it for a minute and then ye, like you say, everyone will run after it like a pit viper. Sunglasses, this one, I guess they're very popular with like right wing bigots. Every time like biggots are pictured in their sunglasses, they'll like donate money to LGBTQ affirming causes or like gender affirming care stuff or whatever depends what the people are being bigoted about.

Well yeah, but I mean, at the end of the day, of the corporations are our persons. There are people behind corporations. Yeah, And I guess I sort of sort of wonder with these kinds of jobs that are all being build in at least in part by AI, what is the impact on a person self worse? Oh yeah, but their their skilled to be just sort of swapped out for a machine. You know, a lot of people have already felt that their work is non essential, and then you have a

You know.

I was actually thinking about it earlier today when I was a child and I was watching TV. You know, if they didn't have anything on the TV that I wanted to watch, and I have to go and do something else, right, Yeah, And nowadays TV is pretty much unlimited because at any point in time, you couldn't have access to anything that an algorithm could see. If you're update is perfectly curated to your interests. Yeah, and it's auto play and everything. It's just one hits after the next.

Like I think we kind of lower the standard that we will accept because it's just so much of it, so much volume of it. Yeah, Like, and you're not so attentive to it because it's always there that like slop becomes okay, it just kind of fills the gaps in this non stop stream of content.

Yes, just filling feeling the noise. I have to catch myself sometimes, yeah, because I mean just like sometimes I just put something on because it was there, you know, and just feeling noise, Like sometimes I have to remind myself, you know, palls, just be with your thoughts for a bit, you know.

Yeah.

Yeah, and I try not to put too much blame on myself even as I try to work on it, because all of this, once again is high design.

Yeah.

You know, these platforms and these algorithms have been set up to perfectly. They're perfectly hone into their abilities exploit the little shortcuts and weaknesses in the human mind to endy just for as long as possible. Yeah. Like so even if you feel like, oh my gosh, I want to get off those media, I want to quit this,

Yeah.

But so I'd just really frustrated by the way that AI has contributed to this sort of disconnect because I also think it makes the whole breath of human creativity a lot less valued, practiced and supported, you know, instead of people actually respecting and you know, supporting the craft and the effort that goes into into things, it's just like, oh, scroll toed the next thing, scrollted the next thing, or for some people who seem to love HI, it's just oh, yeah,

Yeah, of just thinking about like like I see it so often in like like given in revolutionary spaces, I'll see it right like there, I guess sometimes is what it is actually is AI accounts that have no idea what a revolution is. There incapable of doing so because they're not human. But like I'm just designed to monetize clicks.

So you're seeing people are like AI generates and these human fighters.

Yeah, yes, exactly, and then using that for some either just straight because you get paid per click on X now right, or for some nefarious propaganda bullshit, But like it's and then by contrast, right by friends in Memma, there's a group called Art Strike Collective who do these cul drawings of various individuals who have fought in the revolution, and like one is a beautiful thing that shows your respect for these people, many of whom have given their

Yeah, unfortunately, and it's a cliche at this point, but many such cases.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I saw this short lecture on YouTube by a professor professor name as jam This just a short clip from I'm assuming a longer lecture, he said. The title of

You know.

So we're still being exploited, We are still wage slaves in a sense, but we are either unaware of it or we accept that role just to chase after, you know, the next tie of consumption.

H Yeah, Like when you think about a brave new world in nineteen eighty four, right, these two dystopian novels roughly, I mean briefly work came up before eight if nineteen eighty four.

Right.

The difference is one is like a boot jamping on the human face forever, which is like nearly four in hux Leaves, Dystopia is based on people being essentially bought off through pleasure.

Right. Yeah, it's like unlimited cookie in for every wine.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, they call it. It's called sohmer. I think, right, we're in the unlimited Cane for everyone world, right, like it's it's stuf.

I mean, I think we're in both. You know, it's a simultaneously a hux LEYA and all. Well, yeah, yeah dystopia. You know what's the fourth worlds?

Yeah, you're right. I'm starting to read Jack London's Dystopia the Iron Heel. Now I've I've decided I want to work out who was best calling the dystopia. But yeah, we we have a little bit of both. Now we have the they'll get you at both ends, right, Like they'll try and give you things to keep you placid and then also things to keep you afraid. Yeah.

So, I mean there's there's a lot of reasons to the spare. You know, people just blankly embracing eie and they don't see the problem with you was in the eye and all these different things. There's also, as I'd like to end things on reason to right, there are people who are willing to voycott it. Who are you know, maintaining a stigma around it? You know, people are not taking it lined down? Artists, why are not taking it lined down? Writers are taking it line doown? Designers? We're

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think I always like that Supermandante Marcos quote where he says, like, it's not necessary to conquer the world, it's sufficient to build a new one. I like that approach to this AI stuff. The way we make it so people in our community don't turn to AI to talk about things they want to talk about is to be there for them to talk to, right, to build community, to build real human interactions with each other, so people don't have real human conversations with the computer.

Absolutely agreed. Yeah, and that's all they have for today. So all thought, it's all the people. This has been, It could happen here. I've been Andrew, this has been James and Lasst Yeah.

Thanks. We had a very funny introduction.

It was really good.

Yeah, it referenced our company sexual harassment protocols. It was hilarious. You're never going to hear it. We weren't recording.

I was recording, so you can hear my seesh. Okay.

Yeah, if you can just accept what Garrison said without contract and we'll open with that, that'll be great. Yeah.

That is a classic Robert Evans intro. You just did it. I feel like it always comes from insight.

Welcome to it could happen here a podcast about journalistic objectivity. That's right, a thing that we've just demonstrated perfectly.

Yeah, yeah, that's the professional media class. So let's have a little talk about media objectivity. Right. It's been a major tenor of traditional legacy media that they must remain unbiased. This hasn't always been the case in the United States. Right used to have explicitly partisan news sources, which we have now with Fox News, I guess. But that's why you have newspapers like I think Saint Louis has a Saint Louis Democrat or the SO and so Republican like

The example I always give is that if I'm in a protest scene where there's a clash between crowd boys and you know, a group of leftists, and you know, someone on the left pulls out a can of mace and sprays it first, that's objectively what happened. Now, that

Yeah, And like I think very often it's seen as kind of instead of being like a value of the outlet and the way it verifies information, it seems being a personal kind of like quality that journalists should have in every aspect their lives. Yeah, Like, I'm aware that some of the big legacy broadsheets in the us, like, you can't attend to protest unless you are covering the protest, right.

And there's even that famous case of the journalists being like, I don't vote because I think that that would be a violation of my objectivity.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember that. I got have forgotten about that one.

Like you're allowed to have opinions, that's just not supposed to be the entire basis of your reporting, you know exactly.

Yeah, Like, and I think sometimes because people always do have opinions, right, but the opinions that are conceived of as neutral and the ones that are conceived of as being subjective are very telling, right, Like, the media for a long time has been the domain of educated, older white men, like people like me. I guess I'm not old,

Yeah, it was a very compelling mime of a ratchet like it looked like you basically were doing it. I could not tell.

I couldn't tell the difference. No, that's why we call you ratchet straps out, got.

Me a ratchet, Jimmy, Yeah, it's This podcast is sponsored by Invisible Ratchet. Now it's time to pivot to add.

Right.

We rely on, among many other things, something called standpoint theory, right, which is a cornerstone of modern feminist thought. Most of you will be aware of it, even if you're not aware of it. Basically, it holds that we see the

Actually, yeah, I mean a number of outlets do declare like, for example, this outlet is owned by someone who has a financial interest in the company we're reporting on, or something like that.

Yeah, if the Washington Post is doing a story about Jeff Bezos or Amazon, Yeah, usually they will say in the bottom or the top that the paper is owned by said said figure.

Yeah. Where it becomes more murky is like sometimes people have a financial interest or if something is your beat, right, you may have other financial interest within that beat.

Well, and there's there's the very common case of people, especially now within kind of the sub stack journalism, being like friends and social with people that they are reporting on and not disclosing to their wider audience.

Yeah, like access journalism more generally, right, Yeah, Like the way I got this piece was by being invited to the drinks party, and if I say anything, I'm kind about this person, I went invited to a drinks party. Yeah, or simply the conflict of interest and is presented by the more ludicrous my headline, the more people will click on this website, and the more time they will spend on the page, and the more addative you they might generate.

Yeah, And that's really the largest issue with modern journalism is that that kind of determines almost everything for an outlet. Is like, what's what's going to get clicks, what's going to rile people up as much as possible, And that doesn't count as financial interest, right, Like the fact that the outlet has a vested financial interest in keeping you on the page as often and as long as possible doesn't count as like a conflict of interest in any way.

Yeah, problems we need to pay to adds. Sure, all right, we are back. Part of this also manifests in like journalists being supposed to not have any individual opinions about anything, even if it's irrelevant to their beat. This has been the case for a lot of people regarding the genocide

Right, Well, this is what the police said.

Yes, yeah, that is how we get I guess. A pretty good example of this, I'll link to it in the show notes is a piece I wrote five years ago I think about police officers overdosing on fentanyl. Some of you will be familiar with this, some of you will not, but it is not possible to overdose on fentanyl just from being in its presence, like in an outdoor area, next to a thing that has fental in it.

Yeah, if Knarkan doesn't work the first time, like I mean, people do sometimes often it's not especially like with serious ods. They'll often put people like in the hospital on drips, but you would have to take a mess of dose, not just be near fucking yeah.

Yeah, like be like I think this instance, I get they were outside testing it in like they're the boot of a car. Like it's ludicrist to think that you and like it would be good if they familiarize themselves with some of the what an overdose looks like, right, yeah, and I'm mixed.

If they weren't cops, I'd respect the desire to like time theft from work, because I think that's what a lot of this is. It's like, oh shit, if I have an overdose, like I get to stay out of work a couple of days.

With day that's a that's a that's a framing. I'm a medabal to you. Unfortunately they archives for if you're a reporter though, like it is absolutely on you to, oh, this person having an overdose, What are the symptoms of an overdose? What does an overdose look like? Should I talk to a medical professional or you could just ask the perlice information officer who shared this with you, how did you verify this as an overdose? With whom did

Yeah, you have gone beyond God's light.

Yeah yeah, yeah, you live in the darkness. There is I think a place for fact checkers. I think people got to a bit carried away with fact checking. I don't quite know how to phrase this correctly. I had an experience once where I'd written a piece. The fact checking of that piece centered on the fact that I had used the noun beach chair to refer to this chair. Yes, the fact checker believed that it was a lawn chair. To me, did not impact the overall thrust of the piece,

No, I mean, and I think the other and probably the larger problem with fact checking is fact checking is an in in and of itself is ha ha.

I showed that they were wrong.

I checked the fact where it's like, yeah, but what they wrote got out to thirty million people and your fact check got out to like sixty So what you did didn't really matter. And what we should probably be doing is looking at an intervention higher up on the line to stop the bullshit from getting out rather than being obsessed with well, I've actchecked it, like, well but that didn't really help you know, yeah, right, Just at what point do we give that up as pointless?

Yeah, like you are like not even a footnote to this other thing that this person.

No, we need to the intervention needs to be happening earlier because the bullshit is still getting out.

Yeah, absolutely, And this happens like we're in this bizarre situation where like writing outlets can say what the fuck they want, right like, like we have whole massive media empires going in on this idea that the twenty twenty election was stolen. Then we have like centrist outlets instead

Yeah, I mean I agree, Like I think, where I don't actually know how to solve things is the incentive structure, Yeah, is so broken. And to an extent, all of us talk about objectivity. And when I say that, I'm like, the talk that outlets and editors have about objectivity, is there more than anything to obscure the fact that the economics of journalism make it almost impossible for it to

Yeah. Yeah, that's the bad op ed industrial complex. Like I've been guilty of that. Right, you see a fucking headline on social media and you're like, that's bullshit, and then you click and read.

Right.

I used to, like when I was a little baby, journalist's engage with this and be like that's bullshit because and either try and write about it somewhere or post you on social media. But I have come to realize and in doing that, I'm doing exactly what they want me to do, which is continue sending people to their website to click on adverts and to make the money. So I think it's better that we do not do that. But yeah, that is the fundamental conceit of journalism right now.

Well, all right, okay, everybody, all right, they got off a good day in that world.

This is it could happen here Executive Disorder, our weekly news gaest covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis this episode, I'm joined by Robert Evans, James Stout, and Sophie Lichterman. Maybe maybe Sophie will decide to comment on some of this important important news we have today.

To bless us, and maybe Robert will decide to forgive you for jumping into giving the title of this show and not letting me say electile dysfunction or something like that. We know I have not gotten over living. Let's talk about a pedophile. It's time for your Friday pedophile Update. Yeah, we call it the FREEO file minute. I don't like

Now.

This was a report on a multi agency operation going after child sex predators that was headed by the Nevada Internet Crimes Against Children or ICAC organization, which is a joint operation that involves a mix of There's some detectives from the Las Vegas Metropolitan to Police, there's some folks from the FBI Child Exploitation Task Force, and then I

Right.

I'm a big innocent until proven guilty guy. I'm a big reasonable bail guy. But I'm also a big I don't know man. Maybe if the agent of a foreign government gets caught trying to fuck a child, they shouldn't be able to fly back home immediately.

Do they bail out? I don't know.

To seems that it's a reasonable objection.

Yeah.

So you know, this is a classic case.

If you've got the story what actually happened here, then you've got how it's interpreted online, and then you've got how it's being interpreted online by the stupidest person on the world, on the planet, in the planet, and in that planet that didn't work.

Oh, it'd be good if he was, wouldn't it in the molten cools? Yeah, that would be nice.

You've got how this story is being interpreted by particularly bad journalists. Let's say that that's the nice way to put it. And I'm talking about Michael Tracy. If you're not familiar with Michael Tracy, he is ostensibly a leftist and anti authoritarian. He's the kind of guy who just sort of reflexibly if the US is involved, whatever is the worst case scenario for the US doing something is what's happening. During the invasion of Ukraine, he alleged that

The marine details and some of the marine detail.

It was like, we're getting ready to invade.

That did not happen.

Now, Michael Tracy has a sub stack, of course, many such cases. And he published an article titled was an Israeli pedophile really allowed to flee the United States? And I can't tell He starts with like a whole paragraph about Jeffrey Epstein, and I can't actually tell what his stance is on this, and I don't really want he's talking about how people are eager to prove him wrong about Jeffrey Epstein. I have no desire to know what this guy thinks about Jeffrey Epstein.

This is probably a Jeffrey Epstein was a secret massad agent type thing.

Well, except for his whole argument here is that there's people are being incredibly unreasonable to think that this guy is guilty or to think that he probably did anything wrong. And the reason Michael Tracy suggests that Alexandrovitch probably didn't do anything wrong is that the terms of the app pure, which is where the authorities say he first got in contact with the officer pretending to be a child, requires

To be a child to this app.

Yet that's what they were doing, Well, they were pretending to be a child, Jeremary, Yeah, that's probably what they were doing. And the other thing what's really funny about this is like that's his whole point is that the app requires them to be eighteen, So it's you know, the authorities must have been doing something fucked up and lying to the app for this to have happened at all.

Like that's all in the declaration of arrest.

Now, obviously Alexandrovitch maintains his innocence, maintains he thought this person was eighteen all the entire time. All I've got here is the declaration of arrest. I don't have hard evidence, but per the source that Michael Tracy cites, like this is not just happening on pure This is as is often the case, by the way, when pedophiles go after kids, they meet them on whatever app and then take them to a second digital location, right, Like That's just the

No, a biometric user, cybersecurity expert for the histor government and not sending the best people. Oh my god, your fucking thumb print, dude, your fucking thumb print.

Okay, yeah, it's just famous, most secure possible access code.

Anyway, That's all I've got for peta Friday tune in next week we'll have another pedophile.

I'm sure of it. Oh yeah, here's ads. All right, we're back, and it is a pedophile free will. We can't guarantee that, I suppose, but we're hoping Peter free zone from here on it. Talking of things which are incontrovertibly crimes, Israel has deliberately murdered for Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza. Among them was an us Our Sharif, a prominent correspondent for the network in Gaza. The IDF also killed correspondent Mohammed Karka, cameraman Ibrahim Zaiah and driver in cameeronman.

Yeah, because that means one, you've shared a pro Palestine post on social media.

Yeah you said genocide bad.

Yeah, that can mean so many things that as we've already seen, like we've seen some of this stuff already be enforced. This is new guidance material, but we've seen reports coming from people trying to enter the country or trying to get visas that show that this is happening for like months ever since, like you know, like March, I started to see a lot of stuff regarding either pro Palestinian statements or like posts or campus protests that sort of stuff.

Yeah. The f visa I mentioned there is it's a non immigrant student visa right for full time students. So like that is the one where we've seen students having to turn over their social media handles or social media can't be locked. It's very easy to see how these two things lind up. Yeah, and as a guy said, like people. They have always been able to use their discretion. This is just guidance on how they should use it,

The worthy what does that mean? You have to prove to an officer that you're a good person.

Yeah, how so.

Yes, by the officer's definition, I'm assuming.

Yeah, yeah, I mean this is guys for like discretionary enforcement. So I don't like the word holistic here.

I don't. Yeah, there is literally asking him to take into account everything they know about this person and then just make a call. Is this someway you want to have as your neighbor, you know? Like, I don't know what the oh, I mean, I can guess how this

Right.

So it seems that the deputy ag there with the one who gave the order to arrest rasp Baraka right, ice has also arrested a cop. This is our little moment of.

Like harp pond cut violence, top pond cut violence.

Yeah.

John Luke Evans was a reserve officer for the Old Orchard Beach Police Department in Maine. The police chief of Orchard Beach, who's called at least charred, said that the department had used Everify to check if you could work legally, right, which is the thing that you are supposed to do. E Verify. It's a database run by the Department of Homeland Security. I think it's also in combination with another department that allows you to verify if somebody can work legally in the United States.

Right.

Tritian McLachlin characterized it as reckless, which is weird because dhs who she's speaking on behalf of the other ones who put that information into the database. It's possible that someone entered at something in wrong at some point right, someone put in a wrong number, they switched an O

Before we go on break, I want to do a quick update on the Texas Democrats who fled the state to delay or prevent the gerrymandering. And after their two week walkout, the Texas House has now reached quorum once again and a vote on the new redistricting map, which would add five Republican congressional seats, is slated for Wednesday, August twentieth, which is the day that we are recording.

Is that why I think it was a collier slept at her.

Desk one person's I think a state senator refused to sign the slip and stayed in the Capitol overnight. There enough, the Texas House Minority Leader Jeen Wu made a statement saying, quote, we killed the corrupt special session was stood unprecedented surveillance and intimidation, and rallied Democrats nationwide to join this extential fight for fair representation, reshaping the entire twenty twenty sixth landscape. Unquote.

Yeah, they kind of lose.

This is going to get voted in.

Yeah.

Now, Wu has said that the Democrats are going to challenge the redistricting maps in court even if they are able to pass through this House vote, and as we know, the courts are the last bastion for democracy and will

So yeah, it's it's like it's not nothing, but it's like the next just it's one step up from nothing.

It's the most democrat thing to do.

Yes, yeah, but why why only do half of what was necessary?

Yeah, Sophie, you you're asking this question because you didn't grow up in Texas.

I went to the Democratic National Convention. I understand the half effort.

Here's the reality.

Texas Democratic Party exists to disappoint you. That's why, that's why all this is happening.

I just feel like the entire Texas Democratic Party is just like a Beto O'Rourke, like the not not literally, but the concept of Beto o'rour.

Yeah, not wrong, Yeah, it's all.

It's all there.

Never never put your faith in Texas and any part of Texas, and you you'll be disappointed less. I've been telling people this for a long time.

Yeah, it's like the second thing you told me.

Every year.

Democrats in other parts of the country every couple of years get like excited. It's the Charlie Brown system where they're like, oh my god, Texas might be about to flip or something otherwise, good Ted Ted Cruz is going to get forced out. We're finally going to have something good happen in Texas politics. And every time, every time that football gets pulled away.

Yeah, so it.

Feels not great that the minority leaders kind of patting themselves on the back for taking basically a two week vacation to Illinoising California and then returning and having this go through. So I don't know, we'll see this develops. The California is promising to do their own redistricting to equal out the amount of like map changes, both adding five more seats for the respective parties.

It's annoying.

It's just annoying.

It's just annoying, like a nice piece of performance. So I guess you know what else is annoying things?

I don't think they're annoying at all. I value each and every advertiser.

Garrison actually personally vets all of our advertisers so you can reach out to them.

No, no, no, I I agree this is canon. Now, if you're ever unhappy with an advertiser, find Garrison's personal phone number and hit him up.

No no, no, no, oh God, time to go into blocking spree.

All right, we are back.

Putin, I guess is a guy.

That's actually how I would describe the meeting between a Trump and Putin and Alaska Putin.

I guess, yeah, that's pretty much how it went. They had, they had a little meeting.

There are some insane, cannspiracy theories that he sent a body double.

Oh wow, yeah, yeah, it's one of my favorite things. There's always insane conspiracy theories supported from BBC News actually, which I find funny. Yeah, I'm glad that BBC's is on the is on the pulse of theories spreading online.

Yeah, yeah, no.

And and people are just now figuring out again that whenever world leaders travel to foreign countries for summits at this level, they take their poop back with them. And yeah, I saw an article being like, is it true, did Putin really take his poop back? And yes, they all do because they don't want it to get analyzed to find evidence of health issues. Like the President has his poop taken home every time he goes overseas. This is just the way things are.

Frankly. I think if we're able to get the Putin poop, you can make a clone of Putin and then that could be the body show we use. Yeah yeah, stuff that like the fifties of CIA still existed.

As they still use. It'd be a lot more fun. Yeah, we would be doing would hoover.

Really unethical human cloning project where you had this like shambling like undead corpse of that we can problem Christ. But that's basically how the meeting went. Sorry for derailing my bad, no, because the meeting is kind of a nothing burger. At this point. There was reports that Putin basically ranted to Trump about how Ukraine's always has been a part of Russia, and the meeting didn't really go anywhere. Putin ignored a question on if he would quote stop

Apparently Zelensky has been going around other European leaders getting advice on how to like talk with it Trump.

Yeah, he gave him, gave him a letter which which Trump Trump really appreciates and likes. S he uh started by thanking, uh, thanking the first Lady for a letter as well. So there's always like little polite gestures that Trump really enjoys.

Yeah, he likes to be like honored and venerated.

Yeah, so Zelenski indulged in that war of of a fairly a fairly spiffy all black suits. I liked it. It's a good it was a good suit. So it's but it is. It is very indicative if you look at like how the last Selenski meeting went, and then after Trump was around Putin for like a few hours. How how how Trump's mood was noticeably different around Zelensky this time around. So we'll see. I don't think we're gonna have any conclusion to the conflict in Ukraine anytime

But Trump is going to bring an end to the war. He's the peace president, kind of get a Nobel prize.

Yeah, did you know that Trump's ended six wars? Six seven, six or seven? Wow?

Wow?

It's I love it.

I love it when you can't keep track of how many wars you ended.

I got one other story I would like to discuss. I'm sure James will have some comments sense as well on a series of unfortunate ICE actions, including the first instant that I'm aware of, where federal agents have shot their firearms during an enforcement operation, at least as of like the Trump administration two point zero. On Saturday morning, August sixteenth, in San Bernardino, a family is pulled over by massed federal agents in what DHS has since claimed

Yeah, do you want what do you want?

Identification? So those three pops at the end were the three gunshots. Yeah, this is a wild one, the driver told NBC Los Angeles, quote I had to protect my life and my family en quote.

Yeah, it's worth and guess these agents like them more uniformed than some.

Yeah, they have badges visible on plate carriers.

Yeah.

They did not establish much communication between themselves and the family as they approached the vehicle. There's a lot of like yelling back and forth.

Yeah. You can hear the man telling his son they don't open it. Yeah.

The father's telling his kids in the car not to roll down the windows, not open the doors as the federal agents asked for the car to be opened, and then they initiate force.

Yeah.

The man here has lived in the US for twenty three years and does not have legal status as to adult sons who are in the vehicle are both US citizens, according to Javier or Hernandez, the executive director of the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, who has spoken about this incident on behalf of the family to local press. DHS

That doesn't seem to line up with the video that we just saw.

No, the cell phone footage from inside does not show officers being hit by the vehicle. It could be the case that you can see that one of the officers reaching into the car. You can see if the car was pulling away, his arm may have the door. Like the officers are standing next to the car in the video, it's not clear that there's any officers placed in front of the vehicle.

So yeah, his foot could have got run over. Maybe if he's like leaning standing there close to the car.

The car may have bumped office. It does not appear like this man I was trying to quote unquote run over the police.

In fact, he was driving away from them. Yes.

The family says that federal agents refused to identify themselves and did not provide a judicial warrant, that DHS has refused to answer whether agents had warrants, and after the shooting, the driver called the San Bernardino Police Department to report that massman pulled his car over, broke windows, and shot at him and his family. Police came to his house and spoke with the driver, but did not arrest the man because California police cannot legally assist federal agents with

JESU Christ, this is a needless escalation that put people in danger, Like, yeah, what.

Else is there to say though, Like, it's bullshit. This is not an excuse to discharge a weapon. This isn't count as wounding. These people should never been pulled over in the first place. But you know what we are where we are, this is the way ice works.

Yeah, then this will probably happen again. I guess, like, I'm mildly surprised if sam Benadina police did not detain the man on suspicion of assaulting a federal agent, which is something that they could detain him for. Right it's not immigration crime, Yeah, and that is an extremely broad defense and one doesn't have to know the person's a federal agent, for example.

So I guess like, raere, We'll see how this develops. Yeah, it's still unclear what's going to happen to this man. Yeah, I'll check for an update next week. A few days before, on Thursday, August fourteenth, a man fleeing an ice rate at a home depot in Monrovia, California, was hit and killed while attempting to cross the two to ten freeway on foot. Local activists say that during the same raid, ice hit someone in the leg with one of their vehicles, and that person was taken into custody.

This is tragic, right, Yeah, the reckless use of vehicles in LA was remarkable, and I've covered a good deal of protests and a good deal of places. The use of vehicles in an extremely dangerous way by police was notable. When I was up there covering the protests, I think it was in June. It was something that in certainly was very concerning to me. So it would not shock me if people had been hit by anic vehicle. But yeah,

Right, No, it can cause people to do brash, run safe things. They attempt to cross the busy freeway. Yeah, the two town is a very busy freeway always. Now it's extremely tragic.

Yeah, this is yeah, really sad. So Ed Sauce reporting that a student out of California, Benjamin Guerrero Kruth, who had just turned eighteen to begin a senior year of high school, was detained by immigration authorities from walking his dog. One of his former teachers visited him and mentioned that he had overheard. He had told her that he had overheard ICE agent talking about receiving a fifteen hundred dollar bounty for making his arrest.

Yeah. Well, like in some promotional videos from DHS and ICE, they've been boasting about bonuses not only for signing on for this recruitment dry that they're doing, but also like cash bonuses for immigrants getting arrested and deported. And there's been multiple clips of agents like talking about this or like, you know, talking about, I wonder how much of a bonus we're going to get for these batchel of arrests. So this is this has been something noticed in multiple states.

Yeah, that might be why we're seeing some of these like insane arrests right of people who would never normally expect to see.

We reported the news here, We.

Reported the new news.

We reported the news.

Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

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