Democracy Hanging Over a Cliff

blah blah blah blah. Fox is a multi billion dollar fucking company, Okay, like as well as it's CEO is a multi billionaire. They are insulated from this shit. Insurance we'll probably cover it. Now, folks, I'm not a lawyer, right or have do I have an MBA? And some have said to me, well, insurance may not cover it because their Dominion was able to show intent right with all of their findings through their own investigation and through testimony and the text messages and the floods of emails

and the voicemails and all of these things. But seven hundred and eighty seven million dollars to a multi billion dollar company into a multi billionaire is not a big deal, right. You can brush that off like us as commoners, right, we think to ourselves, oh my god, yes, that's a ton of money. I could live and have generations a family live with that kind of wealth. The issue here is that we all thought that this case was truly about democracy and the fourth estate, meaning journalism as a whole.

Fox has been able to lie to their viewers, not just about dominion having a key role in, you know, throwing the election to Biden, and the lies that every single one of their hosts told knowing that they were lying.

secure journalistic integrity and to uphold our democratic institutions. But silly us, because in a capitalistic, greedy society, as Wu Tang clan wrapped so many decades ago, cash rules everything around me. Cream get the money, dalla dolla bill y'all. That is exactly what Dominion did, and they had the audacity to send their lawyers out in a press conference saying, oh, well, money is accountability for who? Because the tens of millions of people that tune into Fox News every day don't

even know that this case existed. And guess what else happens with their settlement. There's going to be no right, no sharing with their audience, no forced overture by Fox to say we lied to you about the twenty twenty election. The twenty twenty election was not stolen. The twenty twenty election was free and fair election. Dominion machines had nothing to do with uh with overturning the election or giving it to Joe Biden, And we apologize for the lies

that we have spread. That also, by the way, had thousands of people take up arms to go quote unquote take their country back. None of that is going to happen because there was no contingency on top of the money for there to be an admission to their audiences about their lives. So Fox gets to give a little bit of their lunch money over to dominion and their viewers are none the wiser, and our democracy hangs over a cliff. So it's extraordinarily disappointing. And I don't even

think disappointing is the right fucking word. I just every time that I think that we are getting to a place where people are becoming conscious of what is happening, where the uber rich and the evil puppet masters behind the attempts at authoritarianism and fascism in this country, when I think that they're going to be held to account, the rug is pulled out from under us, and it's like, oh no, don't you worry. The wealthy, the white, and the powerful. All they ever do in life is ever

have to pay a fine. Right, Fox is responsible for Donald Trump, the monster Fox is responsible, bears part of the responsibility for the insurrection. Why did the insurrection happen? It wasn't just that day down at the stop the Steel Rally where Donald Trump pointed to the Capitol building and told non armed insurrection is to go take their country back. No, it was a series of lies that were spread over the course of months, aid inebedded by Fox News, knowingly.

to bankrupt the Murdocks, then maybe that would matter. If it was gonna shudder the entire network and then send a warning shot to other outlets like Newsmax and oh An and all of these other right wing vessels of hate and lies and disinformation, if it was going to do that, I would say, bravo, Dominion, you've done it, and you've earned the money that you're gonna walk away with.

But at the end of the day, it seems as if the only people that give a fuck about our democracy are the ones that are gonna bear the brunt of this authoritarian regime because everybody else either got a rocket to go to the fucking moon, to Mars and leave the rest of us behind. You know, somebody tweeted at me and it said, other countries, other nations have democracies, and they don't seem to have to fight for them as fucking hard as Americans. Are fighting for our democracy.

And I think that that's right. I think that you know, much has been told about the story of you know, those that are patriots that fight for their freedom and blah blah blah blah blah. But in a true demands and not a Banana republic, do you have to continually be in the streets, continually be vigilant or is that just the story that we tell ourselves. I tell you that, you know, what America has done right, is that America has the best pr best public relations of any country

in the world. It begins with the indoctrination that we get as we enter into the doors of kindergarten until we graduate right about America being great, about this wonderful land, this beacon on a hill, about all of these wonderful people. George Washington in the cherry tree and is wooden teeth. You're not told the truth about George Washington, the slave owner, the brutal slave master that ripped the teeth out of his slave and put them into his own mouth. You're

not told the real story about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings. No, for white America, it's a love story. A love story between a man who is twice the age of his enslaved piece of property, a human being that he was able to discard and use like a ball or a plate, who had no choice, no bodily autonomy. But instead of telling the truth about rape and enslavement and brutality, America weave the tale of a love story. Everything in this

country is based on disinformation and lies. So of course Fox is gonna get away with what it is that they do because there's no accountability, there's no responsibility. There's a reason why there is a force a movement around wokeness and consciousness because we're tired of being lied to, tired of being taken advantage of. And just when you think, when you think, oh maybe we are going to reach the mountaintop, maybe the arc is actually bending, you realize

that it was a mirage. Just like our democracy. There are days when I say to you that I'm not sure what it is some days that I'm fighting for that we're all fighting for. Is it the promise of America? Right, the promise that it will live up to its creed. But promises are only as good as the people who

are making them. So you know, the dominion case, much like how we are learning about Clarence Thomas, how we are learning more about Donald Trump, how we are learning about all of these rich, powerful people who are able to manipulate and take advantage of systems because that is who the systems were built to protect. They have the rest of us scraping around and fighting for the crumbs that they leave behind, filling our heads with this idea that you know, we all must fight while the rest

of them live lives of leisure. I'm just so outdone these days, so outdone. But coming up next my conversation with my friend who I love, love, love love when Jared Yate Sexton joins the show. He is the author of The Midnight Kingdom, The History of Power, Power, Nooria, and the Coming Crisis. Whenever Jared and I get a chance to chat, we delve into the big picture, you know, to the big picture how all of these things are tied together. And that is more of what is coming

up next, folks. I am always so happy when I get to chat with my friend jaredy Ate Sexton. You know him as the author of The Midnight Kingdom, A History of Power, Paranoia and the Coming Crisis, and also co host of the podcast The Muckrakers, Jared Like, it has been a wild first quarter movement to second quarter of this new year in America. I mean, first off, we've had more mass shootings than we have had days

in the year. We are watching Republicans not only in Tennessee, but in Nebraska, in Missouri, in Florida, across this country take their hoods off, and there's no quiet part anymore.

to just you know, off the top. Just the last several weeks have just felt like drinking from a fire hose in terms of like white supremacy and patriarchy, like it it is just inundating us.

country club Republicans. These are very very wealthy white people who, by the way, many of them were educated at the Ivy League schools that.

what they believe. These people that you were talking about, and we were talking about before we start recording state legislatures like are full of some of the most idiotic politicians in the country. These are people who the they won because they're in gerrymander districts, because they're cousins of I don't know, the County Goo director. Maybe they were the first person that they found who didn't have a felony record, and maybe they even had some felony records

and it, you know, didn't reach a certain point. These people are getting the exact same playbook that those high folutant billionaire Republicans, including Harlan Crowe, they paid for all of this to be done in all of these legislatures that you know, they have their fingers in all of these pies. None of these legislators are coming up with this stuff. None of them have cooked it up in

their own mind. They're not writing the bills. This is basically being handed out by all these institutes, all at once and being coordinated. They can't be intelligent about it. Yeah, they have no idea how to play the game right. All of the you know, Bill Crystal and all of these other like old respectable Republicans who claim things you know, went to ellwhen Donald Trump came around. Those people know how to do the game.

the one folks, if you if you recall it there following this story that has you know, hosted Thomas, Clarence Thomas, and Ginny Thomas on lavish trips funded Ginny Thomas's quote unquote nonprofit organizations that she pays herself out of, has been the mastermind behind creating policies that have found their way to move up to the Supreme Court, which he has purchased like a like a little signatore on monopoly and has been able from Citizens United to Shelby County

to the Dobs case and many in between to create this kind of Christian fascist reality that we are living in right now.

ideology is so small like it is. And again, like you go back to what I was talking about with the country club sort of Harlan Crowe set, there's a very small group of people. And whenever you peel back the layers to see what's behind a Republican conservative media operation and personality, it's it's it's Crow, it's the Bradley's, the devices, it's the Kokes. It's the same people who are keeping all these boats aflow, and not just that,

but creating fake follower accounts. They're creating fake views, they're creating fake impressions. And what they're doing it for has always been to make it seem like this very small group of people is much larger. This is not a viable national party. They don't have the numbers, and it's like this thing that happens in our media. It has

the inability to really look at it. It was like this poll that came out a couple of weeks ago that said, oh my god, quote unquote, wokeness is popular with eighty percent of the American public.

The Republican Party is not a national party anymore. They only benefit based on that minoritarian idea that we're talking about here. As a result, these billionaires have outsized influence and they're able to move all this stuff around. Look at what happened with the Supreme Court. It's a backstop. It's a minoritarian institution which we all know has been used to limit human rights, to promote white supremacy, to create conservative sort of dams. In terms of progress, it's

a regressive institution, always has. They've taken that over. Meanwhile, why are they acting so aggressively in these red states? Because they've been jerrymandered so hard that they own them. And on top of that, it's all they have left. And right now is the moment where the Republican Party

has had to make a choice. And this, by the way, since twenty twelve when Mitt Romney got washed out by Barack Obama, we've both read that the autops here report they knew they eyed their head to move away from exclusively white male supremacy or they were going to continue losing elections. Twenty sixteen rolls around. Donald Trump just completely through that in the trash can. This is a losing brand. They are crazy, unpopular freaks, even people who lean conservative.

They don't want people in their face talking about genital examinations of children before swim meets. They don't want people

screaming about transhumanism and satanic cabals behind the scenes. They are losing their popularity and what they have to do is they have to seize control of those minoritarian institutions and Harlan Crow and that people just like him are paying all the money to make that happen before they get washed out completely as a party and lose all viability, and they need to go ahead and make all their dreams come true right now, which right now, this is like a was It's like the crash and dash burgl

They need to get in the store, they need to get whatever they need to get out, and they need to leave and they need to destroy democracy or else they're finished.

lost one of her best friends in that shooting. You have over you know what has happened in Kentucky, and there are people on the force and the governor himself, who is a Democrat, however, lost friends in that shooting. They're creating, Jared, these these policies, right. You have Tennessee was just about to pass their permitless conceal and carry. You have Florida passing, you know, these permit lists conceal and carry laws. They're doing these things that are coming

down from on high, the billionaire is on high. But it doesn't it doesn't create a measure, a mechanism of security or arm's lengthness from harm. So, like, talk to me about this. We got to double down and get

everything this smashing grab of rights and freedoms. We got to scoop it all up, right, then we got to push out our white supremacist militias to defend all of the things that we all of the rights that we have scooped up because we're you know, proliferating the streets with guns, which is the point, right, because they know that they're creating the climate and conditions for revolution, right, because there's only so far that people will be pushed.

So well, when I put all of that together, I mean, is there a logic thread through this? Like I'll like, you know what I'm saying, because you are creating the conditions for your own demise.

you passed that. Like like I just saw a state the other day, a red state just completely defunded all libraries Missouri, Missouri, and it's like, you do you do you think people want that? You know, like does that win somehow? And your culture war? You know, Malia. So part of what's happening is that they understand that there are levers that they can use. They have to use outrage,

they have to use fear right. And this is something I didn't totally understand until I wrote my last book, Them in That Kingdom, which is this has always been how it is the only way that conservatives and reactionaries win is if they're using these fear based appears right. So for instance, not only is there a political incentive, there's an economic incentive, right. So one of the things I'm writing about today, is this bud Light backlash? Right?

firing guns on this stuff, blowing up bud Light cans. Meanwhile, there's a dangerous game that's happening here, right, because one of the things that you're doing is on the right, you are few within this angry white populace that has been told for years that they're being replaced, that there's a conspiracy against them, that the minorities are coming from them.

don't want it to spill out. There are others and we've seen them, we've heard them, and people like you and me pay attention to these things. There are those who are like, that's what I want. I want there to be violence. I want the total overthrow of democracy, and there's a tug of war within the Republican tent over who wins that, and right now, the direction in the trajectory is towards that. You know, It's like that old idea of like how do you avoid running off

a cliff? Will you run as quick as you can at the cliff and then stop right like we're going over the cliff, and we want to go over the cliff. And that's what's winning within the Republican Party right now, which just draws us closer and closer to more of that violence.

pulls us back from kreening. But we know about attention spans. We know that in a couple of weeks, there'll be another mass shooting, There'll be another egregious thing. In the moments that we're watching the people of Tennessee awaken to

their power, we're also watching public libraries be defunded. We're also watching folks get on the floor in the Nebraska State Senate and talk about the fact that we need a six week ban on abortions because we're losing white babies we see, you know, like we foreigners are having more babies than us, like literally saying these things. So I'm like, am I wrong? Am I being hyperbolic to believe that we've already crossed the point of no return?

But where we're headed is going to be violent, is going to be dangerous.

with the branch Davidian. In the wake of that siege and in the wake of Ruby Ridge, people of memory hold that the Republican Party in the NRA also used the same incentives we're talking about today in order to increase their power, using paranoia of what the United States government was doing and what was happening to white Americans. They sold so many guns, they gained so many advantages.

You can go back to the conservative quote unquote revolution all of that, and that was by playing footsie with white supremacists and white militias around the country and going ahead and doubling, tripling, and quadrupling down on white supremacy. Guess what happened. We ended up with Oklahoma City, one of the worst domestic terrorist incidents in the history of the country, in which this sought off person who all these conspiracy theories decided to attack the federal government. What

happens after that? And umembersual as I do, there was a little bit of cooling down, right, just a little bit of cooling down of rhetoric that took place between that bombing and then moving into September eleventh in the War one. Well, guess what if you open up the lens there, it tells a different story. It's not that it went away, it's that it changed and it moved and we're in another period like that. January sixth should

have changed everything. In a sane country. First of all, you don't have January six But then you have a country that actually looks at it and says, oh my god, we need to stop this. The breaks are beaten off this thing. The question is what kind of violence it's going to be. I completely agree at this point it's whether or not we're going to see widespread violence. If we're going to see a continuing balkanization. Are we going to see another person, you know, attack a federal building.

Are we going to see assassinations? Are we going to see any of that stuff? It's starting to look more like the period between the main world Wars and the nineteen sixties nineteen seventies, which was an incredible amount of violence. But what happened there. What happened was we saw younger people. We saw grassroots movements, civil rights protesters, you name it, people who came in and said enough of this right. And I think we're getting to the point where we're

seeing those things grow. I think, you know, not just test scene, not just BLM, but also with the organizers and labor unions that are growing, I think we're starting to see a push back against it. The question is can we gain enough speed in order to curb this before it turns into just an unthinkable amount of violence.

order to you know, sustain their tent. Because if in fact the echo chamber is nothing but a house of mirrors, right, a house of speakers, and it's it's only but a small group of people talking, then have they fallen for it? And is there any recourse if you think that that is the case.

And so if you actually look at sort of the right word turn of the Democratic Party in the nineteen nineties with Bill Clinton and even Joe Biden, they said, you had to go after this mythical independent voter. They believe that not because they necessarily understood the electorate, but because it reflected their own personal beliefs about how government should work. They were illiberals. They were actually centrist and

right center right. They actually wanted to go ahead and frame it that way in order to go ahead and get their way and push what they wanted. I think there are some Democrats who believe it, but it's also just a reflection of the fact they don't want to change anything.

are fascists. The Democrats are doing what they need to do. We don't care if they're kneeling during the BLM protest, like where are the results? I think what we're going to see is a generational shift, and I think small little stories, you know, like the Diane Feinstein thing, the ringing of the hands over Joe Biden running for another term.

I think we're going to see a generational turnover that's going to change how these parties work eventually at some point, if we can get there, if free and fair elections continue, you know.