November 7, 2024 • 38 mins
The Cool Zone crew sit down to discuss where we go from here and how we can prepare for Trump’s second administration between now and January.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Coolso media, Welcome to it could happen here. On today's episode,
we have Robert Evans, Harrison Davis, Miowong, James Stout, Margaret Kildroy,
and I'm Sophie Lickterman.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
This is the post election episode.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Robert, Yeah, it happened here, is happening has continued to
happen here.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Yeah. This has been a podcast from the beginning about
things falling apart, which is a great business to be in,
I guess because they keep doing that. I want to
start by kind of talking about yesterday's episode, the one
that I dropped before the election, because I thought a
lot about like what to put out on the day
of the election, and I kind of made the call,
(00:47):
which I don't know regrets the wrong word. I made
the call yesterday that like, Okay, we've got this new
poll from Selzer. People are starting to feel like, you know,
some of this late breaking news is good for Harris.
Some of the post posters are hurting back in that direction.
I probably should do something to kind of like pump
the breaks on enthusiasm and remind people that even if
(01:09):
she wins, there's still a lot of dangers out there,
right because That's what I saw as like the big
threat model is Harris is likely to win, and then
people are going to forget about these constitutional sheriffs and
all these different kind of like right wing gules that
will still be a problem if we don't take care
of them, right, if we don't do anything to actually
like hamper their ability to exercise power. So I wrote
(01:30):
that episode with that in mind, and it turns out
I was being overly optimistic, and I think it was
being overly optimistic in part. You know, I tend towards pessimism,
which is why this show exists in the first place.
You Know, one of the things that's happened is we've
gotten bigger and more people have listened. Is whenever like
shit happens in the world, we get bombarded on the
(01:51):
subreddit and just like in emails to myself with people
saying versions of like I don't know what to do,
using language that's like very worrying sometimes about how hopeless
they feel. And so I've kind of felt a growing
responsibility to like spread calm and hope, and I think
that merged to a degree with the you know, after
(02:12):
my dad died, this desire to like not just be
sad and de doomer. And I think it led me
to have, I guess, more of an optimistic Like I
forced myself into an unreasonably optimistic frame of mind just
because I thought that was the responsible thing to do.
And I guess I'm kind of like evaluating that now,
(02:32):
like what should I have done differently, you know, if
I'd been in a more logical state of mind. And
I guess the answer is, I don't know how to
be in a more logical state of mind. Like the
problem is there's so much, you know, you've got this
hyper object of a political realignment happening in our country
in this very dark direction you're also trying to deal
with and I'm sure everyone listening is dealing with versions
(02:54):
of this on their own. You know, people you care
about getting sick and dying and you know, losing or
having to start new ones and embarking, you know, starting
to become a parent or whatever. Like everybody's got all
these massive things in their own lives, and like trying
to keep a completely rational perspective on the political happenings
(03:15):
in this country while remaining unaffected from like the way
in which your own life is going to color your
optimism and biases is probably a hopeless cause to some extent,
which I guess is part of why we're here to
try and as a collective offer people our most reasonable,
(03:36):
sort of averaged opinion about what's going to happen. So
I guess that's what we're going to try to do here.
That's what I've got to start with.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
I mean, hope is illogical, but it is necessary, and
I think that's really where we have to start. I'm
going to toss over to Margaret real quick about hope.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Margaret, fix this for us.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Well, I just to say just to say, I woke
up today with some hope, and I think a lot
of that is from my friendship with Margaret, and I
don't think there's a better person to talk about that
than her.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Yeah, Margaret, I appreciate that.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
I often make the joke about the fact that I
name myself kill Joy in my twenties and then became
a professional optimist. But I think that and I think
that actually it could happen here. I think folks here
do it really well. Sometimes determination is almost sometimes the
right word instead of hope, right because or like optimism
is always the right word, because you're like, well, bad
things are happening, and they're going to happen, and they're
(04:33):
going to keep happening, right, And so sometimes we look
at like like climate change, for example, which is the
broader problem. You know, you're like, well, no matter what
we do, it's going to get worse. And so the
immediate electoral problem in front of us, like, no matter
what happens, it's going to get worse before it gets better.
But we need to stay aware of that and stop
(04:53):
pretending like the bad things aren't coming. Well, then still
looking at saying like, well, what can we do? And
for me, the thing that I focus on. I have
a therapist friend who talks about how agency is the
opposite of trauma and that the more that we act
with agency while bad things are happening, the less that
they destroy us emotionally. And so I think that focusing
(05:15):
on what can we do is just incredibly useful and necessary.
And also the fact that things are in turmoil right
now and that means lots of bad things are happening
and the old status.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Quo is gone.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
We saw that with the defeat of the Democrats. Their
whole thing is that they doubled down on the old
status quo, and people don't want that. People want something different,
and Trump offers something different, a very horrible nightmare thing
that's different, and the Democrats did not offer something different.
And so I actually think in a weird way, we
are in a good position to on a grassroots level
(05:48):
build something different and say that people want something different.
And I think that by working towards something different and better, well,
it's the best way to keep our own spirits up.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Yeah, I think, Thanks mac Buye, I absolutely agree, James.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
What's your perspective here?
Speaker 5 (06:07):
Yeah, Like it goes without saying that, like Trump's proposed
border policies are horrific, and his propos migration policies are horrific.
Horrises were also bad. I think like that that doesn't
mean that that Trumps are acceptable or the same, they're not.
But also, like I think, having spent as much time
as I have with refugees, having spent as much time
as I have with people who have gone through things
(06:30):
that are horrific and like state hostility, state violent, civil war,
et cetera, like I have a lot of hope that, like,
like Margaret said, right, there's there's this quote from de Rooti,
it probably isn't real about how like we're not afraid
of ruins, and we've lived in ruins our whole lives,
and we'll build our future in the ruins of the
(06:50):
old world. But like, when I think about the next
four years, like the state will be absent or hostile
right now, absent at best and hostile at work. It's
been that way at the border for a very long time. Yeah,
and we've built our little community and our little world.
And like when I am sad, when I'm despairing, when
(07:11):
I'm scared, I think about the things that we did
in the last year, right we fed tens of thousands
of people by ourselves, and in doing that, we demonstrated
how powerful we are in the absence of the state.
Because the state wasn't there, or the state was actively hostile,
we were able to step in and from nothing, we
were able to build something that took care of people
(07:33):
who needed to be taken care of. And that like
we're not special or unique, you know, we didn't have
like some incredible structure here before. People just showed up
to help people, and like more people will need to
do that now, and that will mean that there are
more people in difficult places who need help, right, But
that doesn't mean that you can't do it. If we
(07:53):
can do it, you can do it. And having done
it has made me less. Yes, I just I'm not
as scared as I would be if I felt like
I was on my own, or if I felt like
that we can't deal with this, because we can and
I know that because we have and I want. Obviously
that's something we're going to focus on. Right we have
(08:16):
between now and the middle of January. I have no
idea how many weeks or days that is, but it's
a lot of time to organize, and it's a lot
of time to put aside some of the differences we
might have, some of the petty disagreements, we might have,
some of the ship that people have said on Twitter
dot com and like, get together and organize and build
(08:37):
a way of taking care of each other that doesn't
rely on the state, because that's always been what we
needed and we need it now even more so.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Yeah, speaking of what we need now, here's some ads.
Oh Robert, what else? You just can't stop him? That
was just physics. There was no other way for.
Speaker 5 (09:01):
That to go. An object in motion.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Yeah, yeah, that was like the oceans forming after the
moon hit the Earth. Well, whatever happened to make oceans?
I don't know. I don't know how oceans came about.
Speaker 5 (09:11):
Even they're gonna call him Rubbitt tectonic plate efforts.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
All right, welcome back to it could happen here where
it is happening here, And Robert still can't help himself
to make strange ad transitions.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Garrison, what do you got for us?
Speaker 6 (09:36):
Yeah, I don't know. I I feel like I am
not an optimist, and I also put a lot of
work into not being a doomer. I try to be
pretty realistic about a whole bunch of my like thoughts
and analysis on this sort of thing, and I tend
towards survival as kind of one of my main, my
(09:58):
main priorities. And i'd like to we talk a little
bit about kind of some of what we actually saw
on election night and some maybe some small like misconceptions
going around, mainly this kind of idea that the country
has like wildly swung to the right, like people have
like overwhelmingly, like more so than ever before, have have
(10:18):
have voted for like far right figures have voted for
far right like bills basically wanting this this complete like
nationalistic takeover. If you look at you know, their presidency,
the Supreme Court, the House, the Senate, and I mean
the final count is still coming in. We are recording
this Wednesday afternoon. It's noon on the West coast right now,
(10:39):
and Trump has almost the same number of votes as
he gotten twenty twenty. I think it's a little bit
under at this point. Now, there is some demographic changes,
certain groups may have leaned more towards or against Trump
than in past elections, but the final like averaged popular
vote number is at this point pretty much the same. Now.
Kind of why this has happened, why he's still kind
(11:02):
of sweeping all of these swing states is we've kind
of had a collapse of trust in the Democratic Party,
and you could attribute this to a lot of things.
I don't think it's a single thing. It is obviously
a confluence of events. I think of one of the
big things is like nine percent inflation is kind of
hard to beat if people, to Margaret's point earlier, they're
looking for something different, and Harris meaningfully was not offering
(11:25):
anything like substantially different. She's the VP right like it's
she has that legacy. I don't think Biden could have
done much more to alter the inflation, but like that,
that doesn't matter. People people feel this and that's very strong.
And there's other reasons why people have kind of lost
faith in the Democratic Party or aren't as willing to
come out in as high numbers as we saw back
(11:48):
in twenty twenty. And crucially, but back in twenty twenty,
in a lot of the swing states, the vote was
very close. Although the popular vote swung pretty heavily towards
Biden in a lot of the crucial swing states, in
some of the states he was only like twenty thousand
votes ahead. Like it was, it was a pretty tight
race in some of those states.
Speaker 5 (12:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (12:05):
Now, the other thing I'm kind of seeing which kind
of reflects this idea that like the country has it wildly,
like the average people haven't wildly become a more fascist.
It's that even in states that have elected Trump, they
have also passed like a decent number of progressive initiatives,
including abortion rights. Voters in Arizona and Missouri approved ballid
(12:26):
initiatives that will serve to protect abortion rights until further
laws are in the books, and in Maryland, in Montana, Nevada,
and New York where abortion is legal, and Colorado, where
there's no laws restricting abortion, they all passed measures that
enshrine those rights into law. Now, Florida, unfortunately was not
(12:47):
able to do this due to the super majority rules.
Even though majority of people did vote for this in Florida,
they did not reach the sixty percent threshold, so that
did not pass in Florida.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
But fifty seven, yeah, close, and it was an outright majority.
Speaker 5 (13:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (13:02):
So people are willing to vote for these types of things,
even if they're unwilling to vote for a Democrat at
the top of the ticket, and like, this is something
that is worth considering when trying to figure out what
exactly happened here and consider why people have kind of
lost faith in the Democratic Party as a reliable institution
to improve their lives or represent the things that they
believe in, the gaza issue being kind of the prime
(13:25):
example of this in the past year. One other thing
I was thinking about this morning when trying to kind
of look forward and imagine what the next four years
would look like, specifically with the concern of figures like
Elon Musk and RFK Junior being put into pretty important
positions of government. Right, the idea that RFK Junior is
(13:45):
going to be in charge of the CDC and determine
public health policies for the country is a very worrying prospect.
Having Elon Musk in a senior advisory role in some
kind of governmental department of efficiency doesn't sound. But as
I was having my coffee next to a beautiful river
in the mountains of North Georgia this morning, I was
(14:06):
thinking about Steve Bannon because my brain is just fucked
up like that, but specifically how Trump used Steve Bannon
to get elected back in twenty sixteen, even though Bannon's
actual tenure at the White House was quite short lived
for whatever reasons like personality clashes with Trump happen all
the time, and he loses friends and advisors at a
(14:28):
pretty frequent rate. And I think, because Trump is just
like petty and you know, ablest and a bad guy,
he might just find RFK Junior and Elon Musk annoying
to be around. Considering rf K Junior's his speech impediment
and Elon Musk's apparent neurodiversity, Trump just might not want
to be around them. So even though he did utilize
(14:50):
both these figures to get elected, albeit slightly later on
in the campaign, it took a while for Musk to
kind of worm his way into Trump's or bit. I
am not convinced that they will have direct access to
Trump for very long. Now. This could happen, but if
you look at Steve Bannon, who was similarly a worrying figure,
he did not last very long beside Trump. So something
(15:13):
like this could happen now, I don't think it'll happen
the exact same way. Elon Musk has been positioning himself
to have the government be reliant on him for contracting,
and he'll probably continue to exist in some form in
that regard, but in terms of his like direct influence
on the White House and controlling sectors of government, this
won't necessarily be a four year thing. I think that
(15:37):
is most of what I had on this topic.
Speaker 5 (15:41):
I guess.
Speaker 6 (15:41):
I guess. The other thing is, like it turns out
in Harris's efforts to kind of court independence and court
like Republicans that largely that largely failed.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Massive failure, massive failure.
Speaker 6 (15:54):
I mean again, it turns out when you have a
party that's running as kind of like a mini fascist party,
and then you have another party that's as just a
conservative party.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
We've got Dick Cheney.
Speaker 6 (16:03):
Yeah, it's not a solid opposition party. Like, why like
this hasn't worked for like the second time in a row.
The stats are almost identical to twenty twenty on this
issue of Republicans voting for the Republican Party. In fact,
it was slightly few slightly fewer of them voted Republican
back in twenty twenty. More of them voted Republican in
twenty twenty four. I think it's about one percent.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Trying to court the conservative vote means that the conservatives
are going to vote for conservative.
Speaker 6 (16:31):
Maybe we should have an actual opposition party if you
believe in electoral politics.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Yeah no, I mean, like the lesson people should take
from trump Ism. Trump did not get where he is
by courting the conservative vote. Now, Trump took over the
Republican Party and made it the Trump Party. And yeah,
like that is what worked, right, Like, and that's that's
(16:56):
the actual lesson. Like, the reason why Dick Cheney was
fucking doing appearances with Kamala Harris was because conservatives, what
we had known as conservatives prior to Trump coming to
power largely are out of the picture, right, Like the
new crop of guys are all weirdos that have molded
themselves in the image of Trump since his rise to power. Right. Yeah,
(17:20):
And one of the things that is, like, the lesson
is not we need to make our own Trump, although
by god, some people are going to take that lesson
out of this. The lesson is that, sure, you have
to come to people with a vision, right, Like, you
don't come to people by saying, well, what if we
put a Republican in our cabinet? Right, what if it's
basically the same as this last thing that you're not
(17:41):
really that happy with, but instead with more Cheney. Right,
it turns out that doesn't drive foot or enthusiasm, and hey,
like that's you know, I'm hitting the Libs pretty hard
because this is like the most catastrophic failure of any
political party in living memory. Right, So they do deserve
to be hit. But it's not like the left accomplished
anything right, either electorally or otherwise. Right, there is no
(18:02):
organized national left wing movement that is worth talking about
in any kind of building power way, Like it simply
doesn't exist.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
And ignoring the blind loyalty that people have for Trump
was a mistake. Yeah, not considering like targeting that audience.
Speaker 6 (18:21):
It doesn't seem like all of the January sixth ads
did anything at all.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
No, did fuck all.
Speaker 6 (18:27):
I mean, in fact, in fact statistically they did they
did nothing. They did nothing to hurt Trump. Yeah, if
Trump gets essentially the same total number of votes, they
didn't do anything to hurt him like that, Like that
strategy was not that was not successful.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Yeah, you have to.
Speaker 6 (18:44):
Offer something, and just the large swath of like electoral
nihilism that the that the Democratic Party keeps keeps running
up against continues to be its most like existential threat.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Robert Gary and I at the RNC talked to a
variety of people who who did not give a flying
fuck about Trump's record.
Speaker 6 (19:04):
Well, of course not.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
All they cared about was no, they had blind loyalty.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Timp I posted this on Twitter dot com, and I'm
thinking specifically of the woman that was like compared Trump's
evil for lack of a better word, Oh, sometimes he's ridiculous,
like my husband, and that blind loyalty and the Democrats
weren't gonna fucking flip those people. That was not gonna happen.
They took a gamble, wasn't even really a gamble. They
(19:31):
took a gamble on the wrong crowd, and like that
that's not effective, But you know it's not really here
or there at this point. It happened kind of like
now what, Yeah, we haven't really heard from me much,
so I'm gonna I'm gonna shoot over to Mia.
Speaker 7 (19:47):
Yeah, and I mean I think I think where I'm
at is that Okay, we're in this moment. Are one
of our biggest advantages is that were not the Democrats. Right,
this has been a fairly comprehensive refer random on the
failure of the Democrats to offer anything. We also like
screwed up offering a better world.
Speaker 8 (20:08):
Right.
Speaker 7 (20:08):
This is you know, if you look, if you look
at what happened to twenty twenty, and you look at
the places that we actually sort of like, I mean
took power as a strong word, but like there are
places where we ran the cops out, and we screwed
up making those places like a world that was like
ideologically compelling it off to spread. And like we're not
going to get like a third do over of that, right,
(20:29):
we have to be able to sort of like when
the moment arise, we have to be able to actually
create a world that is better enough than this one
that we can move. But that's not impossible. Yeah, I
think what we have right now is we have a
period of time before Trump takes power, and we have
this time to sort of wash our beasts. We have
this time to organize, We have this time to plan
(20:52):
and I think the at least part of what we
need to do. And we'll get into this more like
in other episodes and totally later too. You know, there's
there's there's the obvious tasks of organization. There's getting people
involved in things, there's getting into meetings. I also think,
and this is something that's I think easier to do,
like literally immediately, is that we've been fighting completely defensively
(21:14):
on the cultural front for four years and it's been
a complete disaster, and we need to have a large,
skilled cultural offensive. There needs to be something other than
fucking TikTok Mormonism, like we need we need some alternatives
to trad wife ship, We need alternatives to this like
terrible like the fucking influencer sphere. There needs to be
(21:35):
something else. We need to create that very very fast.
Speaker 4 (21:38):
Anarchist tradwife stuff like Christ.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
That's what you're gonna save us, all right, Yeah, everybody,
everybody go buy us sun dress right now, get out.
Speaker 5 (21:49):
There, both of you to assume we don't have them,
robit and.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
I'm gonna I'm gonna pull Robert everything.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Speaking of buying things, it's time for our last ad break.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
All right, we're back.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
And I do want to get I do want to
get into, you know, a little bit more specifics of
what can we do now? And I just want to
say a fucking lot. The cards are on the table.
Speaker 6 (22:21):
It's going to be a busy four years.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
You know.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
I attended Margaret's book books signing last week, and I've
attended lots of our events. And one of the questions
and q and a's, and one of the questions that
gets asked all the time is how do I get involved?
How do I how do I find how do I
meet people? How do I do these things? And you know,
I want to get into that. I also want to
give some very basic tangible advice. You know, don't post
(22:44):
stupid things on the internet.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
If somebody tells you we need to go out and
engage in revolutionary activity. Maybe sit at home right now.
You don't want to come into this thing with the
criminal record. Nobody, nobody is making good plans right now.
Go make good ones. Don't just reactively show up and
follow someone with a clipboard in the streets.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Don't post actionable threats on the internet.
Speaker 6 (23:10):
Don't post that picture of that comedian that gave that
really funny joke. Just don't do it. There's no reason to.
It's not cool. Yeah, Like, don't if you know what,
if you know what comedian I'm talking about, you'll get it.
You'll get it.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
If you're going to, you know, get messed up. Use
substances in order to cope with things. Log out of
social media on all of your devices first, you know.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Yeah, sounds like that's some advice you were giving yourself.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
Sober as a church mouse, Sophie, just just coffee and
clean mountain air.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
For me, A very basic recommendation that I have for
people is to get delete me.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
Yeah mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
It is worth the investment. It is a good product
that That's what I'll say.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
Yes, delete me as a service that helps purge aspects
of your public record from the internet. Right there's a
lot of different site like, yeah, you have been involved.
If you are a person who participates in the economy
through the internet, right, if you buy things through the internet,
your shit has been leaked right there.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
You know. Tagline is your private information is no longer private, right.
And so essentially what they do is they scour the
internet and remove your personal data from online and they
don't do that once.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
They continuously do it.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
This is like a fantastic plug for the product they
are not paying us. Yeah, let's just say the trucier
scientology could not find me.
Speaker 4 (24:32):
Hell yeah, so I.
Speaker 6 (24:34):
Will say there is some alternatives to delete me that
are trying to get up and running. We might do
a full episode on data removal in the.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Future, Yeah, we definitely should.
Speaker 6 (24:42):
It does require you to also do manual inputs. There
are certain sites that delete me when they send takedown
requests to data brokers. Certain sites will not comply. You
have to send requests manually. It's pretty simple. But they
will give you a list of certain sites as well
to do to go through this process manually. Yeah, but
I think like kind of the last thing we want
to talk about is, like we have seventy five days
(25:03):
right to like prepare for stuff. We have seventy five
days to prepare for the next four years. In some ways,
it's going to kind of be like twenty seventeen to
twenty nineteen again, which was a very busy time. Kind
of all of the right wing gules that have been
hiding under the rocks the past few years because of
the liberal doj will probably start coming out of the woodwork.
There's going to be, you know, a lot more stuff
(25:24):
going on. And you know, those of us that are here,
we're able to make it through those years. Some of
your friends probably weren't able to. And it is up
to us to take care of each other, to try
to ensure that ourselves and people we know have a
better chance of making it through these next four years.
And I think kind of lastly, I'd like to kind
(25:45):
of just go around talking about like what that will
look like and how to kind of start that process,
especially during these first seventy five days. Like, brunch is over.
Brunch has been over for a while, Brunch should have
never started. Yeah, but brunch is over now, So what
can what can we do in these next to seventy
(26:05):
five days.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
It's a share your black coffee with friends time.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
Share your black coffee with friends, maybe cork the champagne.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, cork the champagne.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
You're drinking that orange juice though you don't have enough
vitamin C.
Speaker 4 (26:18):
Or when you and your anarchist trad wife friends get
together for brunch, just make sure to actually talk about
real radical things you can do, because if you already
have a way of gathering with your friends, you should
just turn it into talking about more than just how
your day is.
Speaker 7 (26:33):
Absolutely, yeah, I feel like I need to put on
the record that what I said, that what I was
trying to say is we need feminism, not anti tradwife.
I don't know how many was conveyed.
Speaker 4 (26:43):
I was trying to recruit you into my tradwife.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Called no, thank you for clarifying me, y, But that
was very much understood.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
But being a little bit literal right now is not bad. Yeah, there,
so true.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
I think about like the ways that I've found my
people and the way that.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
I have made my community.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Obviously, like the taglines of you know, talk to your
neighbors and things like that are absolutely important. But the
recommendation you know, obviously joining orgs are great. Sure, that's
a great talking point, but that's not really how I
met my community. The people that are essentially my family now,
I met by going to content and different creators shows
(27:30):
and music and different events where we had mutual interests,
even if that meant that I had to drive pretty
far and found people that liked the things that I like.
And it turns out a lot of the people that
like the things you like believe the things you believe,
and if they don't, they're usually pretty open to hearing
you out. Yeah, and I think it's super important to
(27:54):
listen to your friends and also, like I've said this
quite a bit, support your friends weird how be Yeah,
that's super crucial.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Listen to the people around you. And it's not easy.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
I had basically no friends for a very long time
because I did not have the right people around me.
And it took a lot of effort to find my
core humans. I mean, I'm not recommending this. If and
several of us did do this, I moved to a
different state. You save up for it. It's it's definitely
(28:30):
not affordable thing to do, definitely not an easy thing
to do. But I don't know where I would be
without those people, and I love them.
Speaker 6 (28:39):
Yeah, politics and culture do go hand in hand in
so many ways, and kind of yeah, cultural engagement and
ways to kind of grow your social network, especially you
know in places where there's probably where there's I mean
in my case, you know, like trans people, queer people,
people that I'm kind of around, and people who I'm like,
you know, concerned about, like personally who people are like no,
you know, going into these next four years, I guess
(29:02):
like the biggest thing I was kind of thinking about
last night is like, yes, these next four years are
going to suck, and in many ways it'll just be
like everything will just get slightly worse. But like I
know that myself and those I know like immediately around
me will be fine, Like we will be Okay, things
will be worse, but we already have networks, We already
(29:24):
have community. We have these things built up to take
care of each other and provide the things that we need.
And this is something that we'll be talking more about
in the kind of the next few months. Like we
have we have that, and that's taken effort. That doesn't
just happen by itself. It requires effort, and it requires
resistance to this idea like community nihilism, this kind of
belief that like community is like not a real thing
(29:44):
that doesn't actually exist, which is a very privileged thing
to believe, because there's people out there who rely on
this and will continue to rely on this even more
in these next few years. But there are those without that,
and that's and that's the people I'm most concerned about. Yeah,
it's it's queer kids, it's trans kids who do not
have those networks, do not have those communities, people who
(30:05):
are isolated like that is who I am most concerned
about that. And I understand the impulse to kind of
isolate and just go online because that's safer than having
to go out into the real world, or at least
it feels safer, But I don't think that's actually real.
I think that leads to its own forms of detrimental harm.
So like it requires like a getting off discord and
like a going into your community and trying to make friends,
(30:28):
which can be scary, but it is like incredibly crucial.
I think we should talk about like joining actual orgs
as well. I think some other people on this call
can speak more to that and like the utility of
those as well. But I think first and foremostly even
getting a network of friends outside of orgs. It's also
a very is a very good It's not even crutch.
It's just like a life support system that it's going
(30:50):
to be super important.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Yeah, I'd like to throw it to Margaret for a
socond because she looks like she really wants to say something.
Speaker 4 (30:59):
Oh and I don't actually disagree with anything that they're saying.
I think, no, not at all. It is absolutely crucial.
I wanted to just say that, like, I think there's
actually a weird blurriness in the lines between an organization
and a friend group, right totally. And the problem isn't
necessarily subculture. The problem is a sort of if we
have this idea that there's a hegemonic subculture, like in
order to be a radical, you have to be part
(31:20):
of our click, right, And that's a problem. Whereas if
whatever click you're already part of, or already subculture you're
already part of, you turn that radical. I think that
is you know, it's what Sophie was talking about. But
then yes, there's a lot of people who have no
access to any of that, and some of it, as
I think you're saying, is well, if you only hang
out with your friends on discord, like maybe it's time
(31:40):
to start meeting up in person, and even if that's
very complicated to do. But I also think that there's
a huge importance to open door organizing and organizing. Like
when I say orgs, I don't mean like go join
PSL or any authoritarian cult, right, or that there should
never be a one organization that's this is the strategy
(32:01):
that we have to use to fight this. But instead,
if you get together with the people that you want
to get together with and say, this is the problem
we're dealing with, how do we deal with it? And
that is how you can create an organization. And if
you do that, many of those organizations I would hope
would have open door policies and be public because there
are so many isolated people who want to be involved
(32:22):
who don't have any kind of like cultural cachet with
which to get into a more subcultural group. I think
this is why churches are very good at recruiting unfortunately
depending on the church, but like because you can just
show up and they will be like, okay, you have
a community now, right, And that is what people desperately
want I think right now, And we have to be careful.
We don't want to just be like, oh, therefore we
(32:44):
should replicate what they do. But I think that overall
what our movement needs is instead of gatekeepers, we need ushers.
We need people to help people find their way into
the movement, to help bring them in and figure out like, hey,
what are you good at or what are you interested
in being it at? Here's how you can apply it.
And I want to really quickly use a case study
that happened from the last Trump election that I think
(33:05):
was actually fairly useful. It was living in a small town,
a small city with a fairly vibrant to anarchist community,
and when Trump was elected, we called for anarchist assemblies
and they were open door and they were places where
you don't get together to plan crime, but all of
these different mutual aid groups would come and bring representation.
(33:26):
People would say this is what we're working on, this
is what we can use help with. And they weren't
decision making bodies, they were information sharing bodies. And a
lot of different groups spun up out of it that
are still around, like herbal clinics and different mutual aid organizations.
Because we just said, hey, everyone who cares about this,
let's get together and talk about what we want to do.
(33:49):
And I found that to be an incredibly useful thing.
And it's like the kind of thing I would pitch
to people is not necessarily and if you're not an anarchist,
don't do it as the anarchist thing. Yeah, that's what
I'm that's what I care about. That's what I'm excited about.
Speaker 5 (34:00):
Yeah. I just wanted to offer, like, first of all,
like get outside if you can, like touch and touch
grass can be very condescending. And I don't mean it
like that. I just like I was feeling stressed last
week and I went off and I climbed to the
top of a mountain and I sat there by myself
for a while and it was nice and it was
so quiet. I could hear like this little hawk's wingspeeding,
(34:21):
and that was really good for me. That's what I
like to hear. It would not have changed the outcome
one bit if I had stayed and sound twister dot
com for four hours instead of doing that. So I
want you to all take time for yourselves and do
things that kind of make you feel hopeful. I want
to build a for what Margaret said, there are so
many skills that all of you had that you could
share with someone. I think when I started being an
(34:43):
anarchist it was largely because I was going to a
bike co op, and like, people shared their skills with me,
and I shared my skills with them, and we all
shared our stuff with each other, and I worked out
that we could just rely on other people for that shit,
and they did need to be hierarchical or based on
transfer of material goods. People just want to help each other,
(35:07):
And a lot of people have messaged me saying that,
like they know that I participate in mutulae and they
want you to. If you can't see it, then you
have to start it. And that's okay. You can change
the world if you make a caller full of sandwiches
and give them to people who are hungry. I guarantee
if you start doing that shit, you will find other
people and they will say, hey, what are you doing?
(35:27):
Oh I'm feeling people? Why because they're hungry? Can I help? Yes,
It's that easy, and like we can build from there.
We don't have to agree with them on everything, first
of all, but we can build from there. And I
think it can be really scary. But like now. It's
the time to start, not once things get worse, you know,
four eight years ago was the time to start. But
(35:49):
we can't go back. And I want to kind of
finish up with that that, like, we can't go back.
I don't care where someone was yesterday. I don't care
where they were last week. I don't care where they
word last year, like all the malices where they are now,
and we can build forward from here. We cannot go
back and change things. And it is not worth doing
(36:11):
endless recriminations. It doesn't matter it's happened. It's on us
to decide how we react now. And you can react
in a way that strengthens our communities and that builds
ways are taking care of each other, which aren't way
they of controlling each other. That that's all that you
need to do to make this so much less despairing,
(36:32):
so much less terrible, and so much less deadly for
some people. And I know that we're doing that here.
Check in on my friends. I'm in and Daddy and Gap,
I'm checking in on my mutual aid friends. And if
you don't have that, I want you to build that.
And I promise it's not something that's out of reach
like you can do it.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (36:50):
I want to add one last thing. I think a
lot of people think they don't have skills. You do
have skills. The thing that I did when I started
organizing was I move chairs around so that people could
have meetings by moving chairs, and I helped take.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
Care of people's kids.
Speaker 7 (37:01):
That like, helped put posters up right.
Speaker 5 (37:05):
People.
Speaker 7 (37:05):
People can do things. You have things that you can do,
And it's it's time to lock in. That's that's what
that's what we have from here. It is it is
time to lock in. It's time to organize, it's time
to get prepared to fight.
Speaker 5 (37:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Yeah, this is just the first episode after the election.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
In the coming weeks, coming days, coming months, we're going
to go into very specific detail on things. We are
going to provide different information and resources and continue to
defend against disinformation and misinformation. And this is a fucking
daily show.
Speaker 6 (37:41):
We will we will be getting into all of all
of these topics, especially in these next seventy five days,
to help prepare this topic by topic.
Speaker 5 (37:48):
Yeah, it's going.
Speaker 6 (37:50):
To be it's gonna be a long four years.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
It could happen.
Speaker 8 (37:55):
Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more
podcasts from Cool Zone Media. Visit our website Polsonmedia dot com,
or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
You listen to podcasts.
Speaker 8 (38:07):
You can now find sources for it could happen here,
listed directly in episode descriptions.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Thanks for listening.
Coolso media, Welcome to it could happen here. On today's episode,
we have Robert Evans, Harrison Davis, Miowong, James Stout, Margaret Kildroy,
and I'm Sophie Lickterman.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
This is the post election episode.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Robert, Yeah, it happened here, is happening has continued to
happen here.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Yeah. This has been a podcast from the beginning about
things falling apart, which is a great business to be in,
I guess because they keep doing that. I want to
start by kind of talking about yesterday's episode, the one
that I dropped before the election, because I thought a
lot about like what to put out on the day
of the election, and I kind of made the call,
(00:47):
which I don't know regrets the wrong word. I made
the call yesterday that like, Okay, we've got this new
poll from Selzer. People are starting to feel like, you know,
some of this late breaking news is good for Harris.
Some of the post posters are hurting back in that direction.
I probably should do something to kind of like pump
the breaks on enthusiasm and remind people that even if
(01:09):
she wins, there's still a lot of dangers out there,
right because That's what I saw as like the big
threat model is Harris is likely to win, and then
people are going to forget about these constitutional sheriffs and
all these different kind of like right wing gules that
will still be a problem if we don't take care
of them, right, if we don't do anything to actually
like hamper their ability to exercise power. So I wrote
(01:30):
that episode with that in mind, and it turns out
I was being overly optimistic, and I think it was
being overly optimistic in part. You know, I tend towards pessimism,
which is why this show exists in the first place.
You Know, one of the things that's happened is we've
gotten bigger and more people have listened. Is whenever like
shit happens in the world, we get bombarded on the
(01:51):
subreddit and just like in emails to myself with people
saying versions of like I don't know what to do,
using language that's like very worrying sometimes about how hopeless
they feel. And so I've kind of felt a growing
responsibility to like spread calm and hope, and I think
that merged to a degree with the you know, after
(02:12):
my dad died, this desire to like not just be
sad and de doomer. And I think it led me
to have, I guess, more of an optimistic Like I
forced myself into an unreasonably optimistic frame of mind just
because I thought that was the responsible thing to do.
And I guess I'm kind of like evaluating that now,
(02:32):
like what should I have done differently, you know, if
I'd been in a more logical state of mind. And
I guess the answer is, I don't know how to
be in a more logical state of mind. Like the
problem is there's so much, you know, you've got this
hyper object of a political realignment happening in our country
in this very dark direction you're also trying to deal
with and I'm sure everyone listening is dealing with versions
(02:54):
of this on their own. You know, people you care
about getting sick and dying and you know, losing or
having to start new ones and embarking, you know, starting
to become a parent or whatever. Like everybody's got all
these massive things in their own lives, and like trying
to keep a completely rational perspective on the political happenings
(03:15):
in this country while remaining unaffected from like the way
in which your own life is going to color your
optimism and biases is probably a hopeless cause to some extent,
which I guess is part of why we're here to
try and as a collective offer people our most reasonable,
(03:36):
sort of averaged opinion about what's going to happen. So
I guess that's what we're going to try to do here.
That's what I've got to start with.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
I mean, hope is illogical, but it is necessary, and
I think that's really where we have to start. I'm
going to toss over to Margaret real quick about hope.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Margaret, fix this for us.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Well, I just to say just to say, I woke
up today with some hope, and I think a lot
of that is from my friendship with Margaret, and I
don't think there's a better person to talk about that
than her.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Yeah, Margaret, I appreciate that.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
I often make the joke about the fact that I
name myself kill Joy in my twenties and then became
a professional optimist. But I think that and I think
that actually it could happen here. I think folks here
do it really well. Sometimes determination is almost sometimes the
right word instead of hope, right because or like optimism
is always the right word, because you're like, well, bad
things are happening, and they're going to happen, and they're
(04:33):
going to keep happening, right, And so sometimes we look
at like like climate change, for example, which is the
broader problem. You know, you're like, well, no matter what
we do, it's going to get worse. And so the
immediate electoral problem in front of us, like, no matter
what happens, it's going to get worse before it gets better.
But we need to stay aware of that and stop
(04:53):
pretending like the bad things aren't coming. Well, then still
looking at saying like, well, what can we do? And
for me, the thing that I focus on. I have
a therapist friend who talks about how agency is the
opposite of trauma and that the more that we act
with agency while bad things are happening, the less that
they destroy us emotionally. And so I think that focusing
(05:15):
on what can we do is just incredibly useful and necessary.
And also the fact that things are in turmoil right
now and that means lots of bad things are happening
and the old status.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Quo is gone.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
We saw that with the defeat of the Democrats. Their
whole thing is that they doubled down on the old
status quo, and people don't want that. People want something different,
and Trump offers something different, a very horrible nightmare thing
that's different, and the Democrats did not offer something different.
And so I actually think in a weird way, we
are in a good position to on a grassroots level
(05:48):
build something different and say that people want something different.
And I think that by working towards something different and better, well,
it's the best way to keep our own spirits up.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Yeah, I think, Thanks mac Buye, I absolutely agree, James.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
What's your perspective here?
Speaker 5 (06:07):
Yeah, Like it goes without saying that, like Trump's proposed
border policies are horrific, and his propos migration policies are horrific.
Horrises were also bad. I think like that that doesn't
mean that that Trumps are acceptable or the same, they're not.
But also, like I think, having spent as much time
as I have with refugees, having spent as much time
as I have with people who have gone through things
(06:30):
that are horrific and like state hostility, state violent, civil war,
et cetera, like I have a lot of hope that, like,
like Margaret said, right, there's there's this quote from de Rooti,
it probably isn't real about how like we're not afraid
of ruins, and we've lived in ruins our whole lives,
and we'll build our future in the ruins of the
(06:50):
old world. But like, when I think about the next
four years, like the state will be absent or hostile
right now, absent at best and hostile at work. It's
been that way at the border for a very long time. Yeah,
and we've built our little community and our little world.
And like when I am sad, when I'm despairing, when
(07:11):
I'm scared, I think about the things that we did
in the last year, right we fed tens of thousands
of people by ourselves, and in doing that, we demonstrated
how powerful we are in the absence of the state.
Because the state wasn't there, or the state was actively hostile,
we were able to step in and from nothing, we
were able to build something that took care of people
(07:33):
who needed to be taken care of. And that like
we're not special or unique, you know, we didn't have
like some incredible structure here before. People just showed up
to help people, and like more people will need to
do that now, and that will mean that there are
more people in difficult places who need help, right, But
that doesn't mean that you can't do it. If we
(07:53):
can do it, you can do it. And having done
it has made me less. Yes, I just I'm not
as scared as I would be if I felt like
I was on my own, or if I felt like
that we can't deal with this, because we can and
I know that because we have and I want. Obviously
that's something we're going to focus on. Right we have
(08:16):
between now and the middle of January. I have no
idea how many weeks or days that is, but it's
a lot of time to organize, and it's a lot
of time to put aside some of the differences we
might have, some of the petty disagreements, we might have,
some of the ship that people have said on Twitter
dot com and like, get together and organize and build
(08:37):
a way of taking care of each other that doesn't
rely on the state, because that's always been what we
needed and we need it now even more so.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Yeah, speaking of what we need now, here's some ads.
Oh Robert, what else? You just can't stop him? That
was just physics. There was no other way for.
Speaker 5 (09:01):
That to go. An object in motion.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Yeah, yeah, that was like the oceans forming after the
moon hit the Earth. Well, whatever happened to make oceans?
I don't know. I don't know how oceans came about.
Speaker 5 (09:11):
Even they're gonna call him Rubbitt tectonic plate efforts.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
All right, welcome back to it could happen here where
it is happening here, And Robert still can't help himself
to make strange ad transitions.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Garrison, what do you got for us?
Speaker 6 (09:36):
Yeah, I don't know. I I feel like I am
not an optimist, and I also put a lot of
work into not being a doomer. I try to be
pretty realistic about a whole bunch of my like thoughts
and analysis on this sort of thing, and I tend
towards survival as kind of one of my main, my
(09:58):
main priorities. And i'd like to we talk a little
bit about kind of some of what we actually saw
on election night and some maybe some small like misconceptions
going around, mainly this kind of idea that the country
has like wildly swung to the right, like people have
like overwhelmingly, like more so than ever before, have have
(10:18):
have voted for like far right figures have voted for
far right like bills basically wanting this this complete like
nationalistic takeover. If you look at you know, their presidency,
the Supreme Court, the House, the Senate, and I mean
the final count is still coming in. We are recording
this Wednesday afternoon. It's noon on the West coast right now,
(10:39):
and Trump has almost the same number of votes as
he gotten twenty twenty. I think it's a little bit
under at this point. Now, there is some demographic changes,
certain groups may have leaned more towards or against Trump
than in past elections, but the final like averaged popular
vote number is at this point pretty much the same. Now.
Kind of why this has happened, why he's still kind
(11:02):
of sweeping all of these swing states is we've kind
of had a collapse of trust in the Democratic Party,
and you could attribute this to a lot of things.
I don't think it's a single thing. It is obviously
a confluence of events. I think of one of the
big things is like nine percent inflation is kind of
hard to beat if people, to Margaret's point earlier, they're
looking for something different, and Harris meaningfully was not offering
(11:25):
anything like substantially different. She's the VP right like it's
she has that legacy. I don't think Biden could have
done much more to alter the inflation, but like that,
that doesn't matter. People people feel this and that's very strong.
And there's other reasons why people have kind of lost
faith in the Democratic Party or aren't as willing to
come out in as high numbers as we saw back
(11:48):
in twenty twenty. And crucially, but back in twenty twenty,
in a lot of the swing states, the vote was
very close. Although the popular vote swung pretty heavily towards
Biden in a lot of the crucial swing states, in
some of the states he was only like twenty thousand
votes ahead. Like it was, it was a pretty tight
race in some of those states.
Speaker 5 (12:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (12:05):
Now, the other thing I'm kind of seeing which kind
of reflects this idea that like the country has it wildly,
like the average people haven't wildly become a more fascist.
It's that even in states that have elected Trump, they
have also passed like a decent number of progressive initiatives,
including abortion rights. Voters in Arizona and Missouri approved ballid
(12:26):
initiatives that will serve to protect abortion rights until further
laws are in the books, and in Maryland, in Montana, Nevada,
and New York where abortion is legal, and Colorado, where
there's no laws restricting abortion, they all passed measures that
enshrine those rights into law. Now, Florida, unfortunately was not
(12:47):
able to do this due to the super majority rules.
Even though majority of people did vote for this in Florida,
they did not reach the sixty percent threshold, so that
did not pass in Florida.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
But fifty seven, yeah, close, and it was an outright majority.
Speaker 5 (13:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (13:02):
So people are willing to vote for these types of things,
even if they're unwilling to vote for a Democrat at
the top of the ticket, and like, this is something
that is worth considering when trying to figure out what
exactly happened here and consider why people have kind of
lost faith in the Democratic Party as a reliable institution
to improve their lives or represent the things that they
believe in, the gaza issue being kind of the prime
(13:25):
example of this in the past year. One other thing
I was thinking about this morning when trying to kind
of look forward and imagine what the next four years
would look like, specifically with the concern of figures like
Elon Musk and RFK Junior being put into pretty important
positions of government. Right, the idea that RFK Junior is
(13:45):
going to be in charge of the CDC and determine
public health policies for the country is a very worrying prospect.
Having Elon Musk in a senior advisory role in some
kind of governmental department of efficiency doesn't sound. But as
I was having my coffee next to a beautiful river
in the mountains of North Georgia this morning, I was
(14:06):
thinking about Steve Bannon because my brain is just fucked
up like that, but specifically how Trump used Steve Bannon
to get elected back in twenty sixteen, even though Bannon's
actual tenure at the White House was quite short lived
for whatever reasons like personality clashes with Trump happen all
the time, and he loses friends and advisors at a
(14:28):
pretty frequent rate. And I think, because Trump is just
like petty and you know, ablest and a bad guy,
he might just find RFK Junior and Elon Musk annoying
to be around. Considering rf K Junior's his speech impediment
and Elon Musk's apparent neurodiversity, Trump just might not want
to be around them. So even though he did utilize
(14:50):
both these figures to get elected, albeit slightly later on
in the campaign, it took a while for Musk to
kind of worm his way into Trump's or bit. I
am not convinced that they will have direct access to
Trump for very long. Now. This could happen, but if
you look at Steve Bannon, who was similarly a worrying figure,
he did not last very long beside Trump. So something
(15:13):
like this could happen now, I don't think it'll happen
the exact same way. Elon Musk has been positioning himself
to have the government be reliant on him for contracting,
and he'll probably continue to exist in some form in
that regard, but in terms of his like direct influence
on the White House and controlling sectors of government, this
won't necessarily be a four year thing. I think that
(15:37):
is most of what I had on this topic.
Speaker 5 (15:41):
I guess.
Speaker 6 (15:41):
I guess. The other thing is, like it turns out
in Harris's efforts to kind of court independence and court
like Republicans that largely that largely failed.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Massive failure, massive failure.
Speaker 6 (15:54):
I mean again, it turns out when you have a
party that's running as kind of like a mini fascist party,
and then you have another party that's as just a
conservative party.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
We've got Dick Cheney.
Speaker 6 (16:03):
Yeah, it's not a solid opposition party. Like, why like
this hasn't worked for like the second time in a row.
The stats are almost identical to twenty twenty on this
issue of Republicans voting for the Republican Party. In fact,
it was slightly few slightly fewer of them voted Republican
back in twenty twenty. More of them voted Republican in
twenty twenty four. I think it's about one percent.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Trying to court the conservative vote means that the conservatives
are going to vote for conservative.
Speaker 6 (16:31):
Maybe we should have an actual opposition party if you
believe in electoral politics.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Yeah no, I mean, like the lesson people should take
from trump Ism. Trump did not get where he is
by courting the conservative vote. Now, Trump took over the
Republican Party and made it the Trump Party. And yeah,
like that is what worked, right, Like, and that's that's
(16:56):
the actual lesson. Like, the reason why Dick Cheney was
fucking doing appearances with Kamala Harris was because conservatives, what
we had known as conservatives prior to Trump coming to
power largely are out of the picture, right, Like the
new crop of guys are all weirdos that have molded
themselves in the image of Trump since his rise to power. Right. Yeah,
(17:20):
And one of the things that is, like, the lesson
is not we need to make our own Trump, although
by god, some people are going to take that lesson
out of this. The lesson is that, sure, you have
to come to people with a vision, right, Like, you
don't come to people by saying, well, what if we
put a Republican in our cabinet? Right, what if it's
basically the same as this last thing that you're not
(17:41):
really that happy with, but instead with more Cheney. Right,
it turns out that doesn't drive foot or enthusiasm, and hey,
like that's you know, I'm hitting the Libs pretty hard
because this is like the most catastrophic failure of any
political party in living memory. Right, So they do deserve
to be hit. But it's not like the left accomplished
anything right, either electorally or otherwise. Right, there is no
(18:02):
organized national left wing movement that is worth talking about
in any kind of building power way, Like it simply
doesn't exist.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
And ignoring the blind loyalty that people have for Trump
was a mistake. Yeah, not considering like targeting that audience.
Speaker 6 (18:21):
It doesn't seem like all of the January sixth ads
did anything at all.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
No, did fuck all.
Speaker 6 (18:27):
I mean, in fact, in fact statistically they did they
did nothing. They did nothing to hurt Trump. Yeah, if
Trump gets essentially the same total number of votes, they
didn't do anything to hurt him like that, Like that
strategy was not that was not successful.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Yeah, you have to.
Speaker 6 (18:44):
Offer something, and just the large swath of like electoral
nihilism that the that the Democratic Party keeps keeps running
up against continues to be its most like existential threat.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Robert Gary and I at the RNC talked to a
variety of people who who did not give a flying
fuck about Trump's record.
Speaker 6 (19:04):
Well, of course not.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
All they cared about was no, they had blind loyalty.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Timp I posted this on Twitter dot com, and I'm
thinking specifically of the woman that was like compared Trump's
evil for lack of a better word, Oh, sometimes he's ridiculous,
like my husband, and that blind loyalty and the Democrats
weren't gonna fucking flip those people. That was not gonna happen.
They took a gamble, wasn't even really a gamble. They
(19:31):
took a gamble on the wrong crowd, and like that
that's not effective, But you know it's not really here
or there at this point. It happened kind of like
now what, Yeah, we haven't really heard from me much,
so I'm gonna I'm gonna shoot over to Mia.
Speaker 7 (19:47):
Yeah, and I mean I think I think where I'm
at is that Okay, we're in this moment. Are one
of our biggest advantages is that were not the Democrats. Right,
this has been a fairly comprehensive refer random on the
failure of the Democrats to offer anything. We also like
screwed up offering a better world.
Speaker 8 (20:08):
Right.
Speaker 7 (20:08):
This is you know, if you look, if you look
at what happened to twenty twenty, and you look at
the places that we actually sort of like, I mean
took power as a strong word, but like there are
places where we ran the cops out, and we screwed
up making those places like a world that was like
ideologically compelling it off to spread. And like we're not
going to get like a third do over of that, right,
(20:29):
we have to be able to sort of like when
the moment arise, we have to be able to actually
create a world that is better enough than this one
that we can move. But that's not impossible. Yeah, I
think what we have right now is we have a
period of time before Trump takes power, and we have
this time to sort of wash our beasts. We have
this time to organize, We have this time to plan
(20:52):
and I think the at least part of what we
need to do. And we'll get into this more like
in other episodes and totally later too. You know, there's
there's there's the obvious tasks of organization. There's getting people
involved in things, there's getting into meetings. I also think,
and this is something that's I think easier to do,
like literally immediately, is that we've been fighting completely defensively
(21:14):
on the cultural front for four years and it's been
a complete disaster, and we need to have a large,
skilled cultural offensive. There needs to be something other than
fucking TikTok Mormonism, like we need we need some alternatives
to trad wife ship, We need alternatives to this like
terrible like the fucking influencer sphere. There needs to be
(21:35):
something else. We need to create that very very fast.
Speaker 4 (21:38):
Anarchist tradwife stuff like Christ.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
That's what you're gonna save us, all right, Yeah, everybody,
everybody go buy us sun dress right now, get out.
Speaker 5 (21:49):
There, both of you to assume we don't have them,
robit and.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
I'm gonna I'm gonna pull Robert everything.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Speaking of buying things, it's time for our last ad break.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
All right, we're back.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
And I do want to get I do want to
get into, you know, a little bit more specifics of
what can we do now? And I just want to
say a fucking lot. The cards are on the table.
Speaker 6 (22:21):
It's going to be a busy four years.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
You know.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
I attended Margaret's book books signing last week, and I've
attended lots of our events. And one of the questions
and q and a's, and one of the questions that
gets asked all the time is how do I get involved?
How do I how do I find how do I
meet people? How do I do these things? And you know,
I want to get into that. I also want to
give some very basic tangible advice. You know, don't post
(22:44):
stupid things on the internet.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
If somebody tells you we need to go out and
engage in revolutionary activity. Maybe sit at home right now.
You don't want to come into this thing with the
criminal record. Nobody, nobody is making good plans right now.
Go make good ones. Don't just reactively show up and
follow someone with a clipboard in the streets.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Don't post actionable threats on the internet.
Speaker 6 (23:10):
Don't post that picture of that comedian that gave that
really funny joke. Just don't do it. There's no reason to.
It's not cool. Yeah, Like, don't if you know what,
if you know what comedian I'm talking about, you'll get it.
You'll get it.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
If you're going to, you know, get messed up. Use
substances in order to cope with things. Log out of
social media on all of your devices first, you know.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Yeah, sounds like that's some advice you were giving yourself.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
Sober as a church mouse, Sophie, just just coffee and
clean mountain air.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
For me, A very basic recommendation that I have for
people is to get delete me.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
Yeah mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
It is worth the investment. It is a good product
that That's what I'll say.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
Yes, delete me as a service that helps purge aspects
of your public record from the internet. Right there's a
lot of different site like, yeah, you have been involved.
If you are a person who participates in the economy
through the internet, right, if you buy things through the internet,
your shit has been leaked right there.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
You know. Tagline is your private information is no longer private, right.
And so essentially what they do is they scour the
internet and remove your personal data from online and they
don't do that once.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
They continuously do it.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
This is like a fantastic plug for the product they
are not paying us. Yeah, let's just say the trucier
scientology could not find me.
Speaker 4 (24:32):
Hell yeah, so I.
Speaker 6 (24:34):
Will say there is some alternatives to delete me that
are trying to get up and running. We might do
a full episode on data removal in the.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Future, Yeah, we definitely should.
Speaker 6 (24:42):
It does require you to also do manual inputs. There
are certain sites that delete me when they send takedown
requests to data brokers. Certain sites will not comply. You
have to send requests manually. It's pretty simple. But they
will give you a list of certain sites as well
to do to go through this process manually. Yeah, but
I think like kind of the last thing we want
to talk about is, like we have seventy five days
(25:03):
right to like prepare for stuff. We have seventy five
days to prepare for the next four years. In some ways,
it's going to kind of be like twenty seventeen to
twenty nineteen again, which was a very busy time. Kind
of all of the right wing gules that have been
hiding under the rocks the past few years because of
the liberal doj will probably start coming out of the woodwork.
There's going to be, you know, a lot more stuff
(25:24):
going on. And you know, those of us that are here,
we're able to make it through those years. Some of
your friends probably weren't able to. And it is up
to us to take care of each other, to try
to ensure that ourselves and people we know have a
better chance of making it through these next four years.
And I think kind of lastly, I'd like to kind
(25:45):
of just go around talking about like what that will
look like and how to kind of start that process,
especially during these first seventy five days. Like, brunch is over.
Brunch has been over for a while, Brunch should have
never started. Yeah, but brunch is over now, So what
can what can we do in these next to seventy
(26:05):
five days.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
It's a share your black coffee with friends time.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
Share your black coffee with friends, maybe cork the champagne.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, cork the champagne.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
You're drinking that orange juice though you don't have enough
vitamin C.
Speaker 4 (26:18):
Or when you and your anarchist trad wife friends get
together for brunch, just make sure to actually talk about
real radical things you can do, because if you already
have a way of gathering with your friends, you should
just turn it into talking about more than just how
your day is.
Speaker 7 (26:33):
Absolutely, yeah, I feel like I need to put on
the record that what I said, that what I was
trying to say is we need feminism, not anti tradwife.
I don't know how many was conveyed.
Speaker 4 (26:43):
I was trying to recruit you into my tradwife.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Called no, thank you for clarifying me, y, But that
was very much understood.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
But being a little bit literal right now is not bad. Yeah, there,
so true.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
I think about like the ways that I've found my
people and the way that.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
I have made my community.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Obviously, like the taglines of you know, talk to your
neighbors and things like that are absolutely important. But the
recommendation you know, obviously joining orgs are great. Sure, that's
a great talking point, but that's not really how I
met my community. The people that are essentially my family now,
I met by going to content and different creators shows
(27:30):
and music and different events where we had mutual interests,
even if that meant that I had to drive pretty
far and found people that liked the things that I like.
And it turns out a lot of the people that
like the things you like believe the things you believe,
and if they don't, they're usually pretty open to hearing
you out. Yeah, and I think it's super important to
(27:54):
listen to your friends and also, like I've said this
quite a bit, support your friends weird how be Yeah,
that's super crucial.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Listen to the people around you. And it's not easy.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
I had basically no friends for a very long time
because I did not have the right people around me.
And it took a lot of effort to find my
core humans. I mean, I'm not recommending this. If and
several of us did do this, I moved to a
different state. You save up for it. It's it's definitely
(28:30):
not affordable thing to do, definitely not an easy thing
to do. But I don't know where I would be
without those people, and I love them.
Speaker 6 (28:39):
Yeah, politics and culture do go hand in hand in
so many ways, and kind of yeah, cultural engagement and
ways to kind of grow your social network, especially you
know in places where there's probably where there's I mean
in my case, you know, like trans people, queer people,
people that I'm kind of around, and people who I'm like,
you know, concerned about, like personally who people are like no,
you know, going into these next four years, I guess
(29:02):
like the biggest thing I was kind of thinking about
last night is like, yes, these next four years are
going to suck, and in many ways it'll just be
like everything will just get slightly worse. But like I
know that myself and those I know like immediately around
me will be fine, Like we will be Okay, things
will be worse, but we already have networks, We already
(29:24):
have community. We have these things built up to take
care of each other and provide the things that we need.
And this is something that we'll be talking more about
in the kind of the next few months. Like we
have we have that, and that's taken effort. That doesn't
just happen by itself. It requires effort, and it requires
resistance to this idea like community nihilism, this kind of
belief that like community is like not a real thing
(29:44):
that doesn't actually exist, which is a very privileged thing
to believe, because there's people out there who rely on
this and will continue to rely on this even more
in these next few years. But there are those without that,
and that's and that's the people I'm most concerned about. Yeah,
it's it's queer kids, it's trans kids who do not
have those networks, do not have those communities, people who
(30:05):
are isolated like that is who I am most concerned
about that. And I understand the impulse to kind of
isolate and just go online because that's safer than having
to go out into the real world, or at least
it feels safer, But I don't think that's actually real.
I think that leads to its own forms of detrimental harm.
So like it requires like a getting off discord and
like a going into your community and trying to make friends,
(30:28):
which can be scary, but it is like incredibly crucial.
I think we should talk about like joining actual orgs
as well. I think some other people on this call
can speak more to that and like the utility of
those as well. But I think first and foremostly even
getting a network of friends outside of orgs. It's also
a very is a very good It's not even crutch.
It's just like a life support system that it's going
(30:50):
to be super important.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Yeah, I'd like to throw it to Margaret for a
socond because she looks like she really wants to say something.
Speaker 4 (30:59):
Oh and I don't actually disagree with anything that they're saying.
I think, no, not at all. It is absolutely crucial.
I wanted to just say that, like, I think there's
actually a weird blurriness in the lines between an organization
and a friend group, right totally. And the problem isn't
necessarily subculture. The problem is a sort of if we
have this idea that there's a hegemonic subculture, like in
order to be a radical, you have to be part
(31:20):
of our click, right, And that's a problem. Whereas if
whatever click you're already part of, or already subculture you're
already part of, you turn that radical. I think that
is you know, it's what Sophie was talking about. But
then yes, there's a lot of people who have no
access to any of that, and some of it, as
I think you're saying, is well, if you only hang
out with your friends on discord, like maybe it's time
(31:40):
to start meeting up in person, and even if that's
very complicated to do. But I also think that there's
a huge importance to open door organizing and organizing. Like
when I say orgs, I don't mean like go join
PSL or any authoritarian cult, right, or that there should
never be a one organization that's this is the strategy
(32:01):
that we have to use to fight this. But instead,
if you get together with the people that you want
to get together with and say, this is the problem
we're dealing with, how do we deal with it? And
that is how you can create an organization. And if
you do that, many of those organizations I would hope
would have open door policies and be public because there
are so many isolated people who want to be involved
(32:22):
who don't have any kind of like cultural cachet with
which to get into a more subcultural group. I think
this is why churches are very good at recruiting unfortunately
depending on the church, but like because you can just
show up and they will be like, okay, you have
a community now, right, And that is what people desperately
want I think right now, And we have to be careful.
We don't want to just be like, oh, therefore we
(32:44):
should replicate what they do. But I think that overall
what our movement needs is instead of gatekeepers, we need ushers.
We need people to help people find their way into
the movement, to help bring them in and figure out like, hey,
what are you good at or what are you interested
in being it at? Here's how you can apply it.
And I want to really quickly use a case study
that happened from the last Trump election that I think
(33:05):
was actually fairly useful. It was living in a small town,
a small city with a fairly vibrant to anarchist community,
and when Trump was elected, we called for anarchist assemblies
and they were open door and they were places where
you don't get together to plan crime, but all of
these different mutual aid groups would come and bring representation.
(33:26):
People would say this is what we're working on, this
is what we can use help with. And they weren't
decision making bodies, they were information sharing bodies. And a
lot of different groups spun up out of it that
are still around, like herbal clinics and different mutual aid organizations.
Because we just said, hey, everyone who cares about this,
let's get together and talk about what we want to do.
(33:49):
And I found that to be an incredibly useful thing.
And it's like the kind of thing I would pitch
to people is not necessarily and if you're not an anarchist,
don't do it as the anarchist thing. Yeah, that's what
I'm that's what I care about. That's what I'm excited about.
Speaker 5 (34:00):
Yeah. I just wanted to offer, like, first of all,
like get outside if you can, like touch and touch
grass can be very condescending. And I don't mean it
like that. I just like I was feeling stressed last
week and I went off and I climbed to the
top of a mountain and I sat there by myself
for a while and it was nice and it was
so quiet. I could hear like this little hawk's wingspeeding,
(34:21):
and that was really good for me. That's what I
like to hear. It would not have changed the outcome
one bit if I had stayed and sound twister dot
com for four hours instead of doing that. So I
want you to all take time for yourselves and do
things that kind of make you feel hopeful. I want
to build a for what Margaret said, there are so
many skills that all of you had that you could
share with someone. I think when I started being an
(34:43):
anarchist it was largely because I was going to a
bike co op, and like, people shared their skills with me,
and I shared my skills with them, and we all
shared our stuff with each other, and I worked out
that we could just rely on other people for that shit,
and they did need to be hierarchical or based on
transfer of material goods. People just want to help each other,
(35:07):
And a lot of people have messaged me saying that,
like they know that I participate in mutulae and they
want you to. If you can't see it, then you
have to start it. And that's okay. You can change
the world if you make a caller full of sandwiches
and give them to people who are hungry. I guarantee
if you start doing that shit, you will find other
people and they will say, hey, what are you doing?
(35:27):
Oh I'm feeling people? Why because they're hungry? Can I help? Yes,
It's that easy, and like we can build from there.
We don't have to agree with them on everything, first
of all, but we can build from there. And I
think it can be really scary. But like now. It's
the time to start, not once things get worse, you know,
four eight years ago was the time to start. But
(35:49):
we can't go back. And I want to kind of
finish up with that that, like, we can't go back.
I don't care where someone was yesterday. I don't care
where they were last week. I don't care where they
word last year, like all the malices where they are now,
and we can build forward from here. We cannot go
back and change things. And it is not worth doing
(36:11):
endless recriminations. It doesn't matter it's happened. It's on us
to decide how we react now. And you can react
in a way that strengthens our communities and that builds
ways are taking care of each other, which aren't way
they of controlling each other. That that's all that you
need to do to make this so much less despairing,
(36:32):
so much less terrible, and so much less deadly for
some people. And I know that we're doing that here.
Check in on my friends. I'm in and Daddy and Gap,
I'm checking in on my mutual aid friends. And if
you don't have that, I want you to build that.
And I promise it's not something that's out of reach
like you can do it.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (36:50):
I want to add one last thing. I think a
lot of people think they don't have skills. You do
have skills. The thing that I did when I started
organizing was I move chairs around so that people could
have meetings by moving chairs, and I helped take.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
Care of people's kids.
Speaker 7 (37:01):
That like, helped put posters up right.
Speaker 5 (37:05):
People.
Speaker 7 (37:05):
People can do things. You have things that you can do,
And it's it's time to lock in. That's that's what
that's what we have from here. It is it is
time to lock in. It's time to organize, it's time
to get prepared to fight.
Speaker 5 (37:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Yeah, this is just the first episode after the election.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
In the coming weeks, coming days, coming months, we're going
to go into very specific detail on things. We are
going to provide different information and resources and continue to
defend against disinformation and misinformation. And this is a fucking
daily show.
Speaker 6 (37:41):
We will we will be getting into all of all
of these topics, especially in these next seventy five days,
to help prepare this topic by topic.
Speaker 5 (37:48):
Yeah, it's going.
Speaker 6 (37:50):
To be it's gonna be a long four years.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
It could happen.
Speaker 8 (37:55):
Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more
podcasts from Cool Zone Media. Visit our website Polsonmedia dot com,
or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
You listen to podcasts.
Speaker 8 (38:07):
You can now find sources for it could happen here,
listed directly in episode descriptions.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Thanks for listening.
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