Behind the Bastards - It Could Happen Here Weekly 93

Episode Date: July 29, 2023

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file.     You can now listen to all Cool Zone Media shows, 100% ad-free through the Cooler Zone Media subscription, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. So, open your Apple Podcasts app, search for “Cooler Zone Media” and subscribe today! http://apple.co/coolerzoneSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

911 what's your emergency? It's a nightmare we could never have imagined. In a killer, we were still on the loose. In the 1980s, we were in high school losing friends, teachers, and community members. We weren't safe anywhere. Would we be next? It was getting harder and harder to live in Mompine.

Listen to the Murder Years on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The True Crime Podcast Sacred Scandal returns for a second season to investigate a led sexual abuse at Mexico's La Luz del Mundo Mega Church. Journalist Robert Garza explores survivor stories of pure evil experiences at the hands of a self-proclaimed apostle who is now behind bars. I remember as a little girl being groomed to be his concubine, that's how I was raised. It is not wrong if you take your clothes off for the apostle.

Listen to Sacred Scandal on the IHR radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, what's up y'all, this is Eric Andreik, but I made a podcast called Bomming about absolutely tanking on stage. your podcasts. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's gonna be nothing new here for you But you can make your own decisions Welcome to it could happen here a podcast where myself, garrison davis and james stout just created a new soon-to-be-beloved fiction character,

racist Sherlock Holmes. And don't worry, we're not done workshopping it, it's not ready to go public yet. But when this bit drops, you people are going to lose your minds. Oh, how's everyone doing today? Much better after learning about racist shallow combs. Uh-huh, after, no, we didn't learn about him. He burst fully formed from our heads, like Athena from the brain of Zeus. Ah, good stuff.

Speaking of the Greek and Roman pagan pantheon, James Garrison, you know who does kind of have the feel of a malevolent spirit in Greek mythology? Is Ron DeSantis? Yeah, not Ron. Sure. Meatball Ron. That's what they call him. After all my years studying the papyri. This is I can confer.

Yeah. Meatball Ron. I'm going to I have a long essay on my sub stack about how meatball Ron and the Egyptian deity Mahat are are really directly related to one another. But that that that'll that'll you can find that on my sub stack. My Egyptology focused sub stack. Yeah, he's not a what's his what's the God of the sun? The God of the sun disk. The one they tried to do a monotheism for. Oh, yeah, that is not raw. Yeah.

That that one's a hundred percent sure it's right. Yeah, I can see Decentre seeing himself in those terms. No, Ma'at like Ron Decentre. I think DeSantis is more of like a Horace figure, actually. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, no, because Ma'at, here's the thing. Ma'at has wings and Ron DeSantis is currently flying over us, shading us all in the comfort of his mighty Technicolor wingspan. I'm seeing Ma'at, Ma, looks, there's too many colors in these wings. I don't know why we got onto a comparing Rhonda Santas did. This was a mistake.

Anyway, Garrison, you just last week, we closed out on two great episodes about a Fashwave and the adoption and kind of reposting of a lot of these aesthetics that had become popular on the far right via, you know, the dark brand and memes. And a big part of that was how Rhonda Santas somehow allowed some incredibly internet poise and zoomers to make an ad for him that was far too online for a presidential campaign ad. And I felt like it was time to kind of have a discussion about meatball Ron because obviously things in Florida are very ugly right now. As a fascist, which he definitely is, Ron DeSantis is an effective

administrator, which I mean, he's good at twisting the administrative state that exists into a weapon to attack marginalized groups. He's been effective at that. What's happening legally in the laws, a lot of the anti-trans laws, the anti-drag laws in Florida is very frightening. What he's been doing to the Florida education system, state education system is very unsettling. And that is, all of that is worthy of further discussion. But I think because the most immediate concern we have is like, is

this guy going to be able to do that on a national scale, right? Which is not to say that we should just let Florida, you know, sink into the abyss. I don't believe that. But at the moment, Rhonda Santis is tied for second place against Donald Trump. So it kind of, it, it, it behooves us to ask the questions purely for the purpose of self-defense. Can Rhonda Santis win, right? Could he actually become not even the first question is like, could he become the Republican presidential candidate? Can he beat Donald Trump?

And the short good answer to that is, I don't think so. It's not looking good. Not looking good for Omeep Al-Ran. Agreed. And I wanted to get into why. And kind of some of the fundamental flaws, as a guy who is, there was this belief, fear, I think a reasonable fear among a lot of liberals

and folks on the left, that because of how effective he's been consolidating and expanding his power in Florida, and because he's generally seemed like less of a, like Donald Trump has certain competences as an authoritarian. There's things he's very good at. But he was not good at being the president. He was not good at using power. He's not enough to fascist in a lot of ways. He's not enough fascist, right? Like he wasn't good at picking people to like do things

for him. He wasn't good at, he was good at hurting people in a blunt way, but he was kind of incompetent at re re like a competent fascist. Hitler was a competent fascist, right? He was not in there long in an elected position before he had effectively made it impossible to oust him without military force. And Trump was never good at doing that stuff. And the worry is that Rhonda Santas would be. The good news is that Rhonda Santas is incompetent

as a politician and a political candidate. So I wanted to kind of start with why a lot of his, the people who do form his base, which is quite shrinking at the moment. He's losing a lot of support. Why they thought he was capable of winning the primary and the general. And when you look into kind of why a lot of sort of Republican, like legacy Republicans,

the folks who often could call it rhinos, why a lot of them decided to back, uh, Rhonda Santas, the best summer you're going to get comes from Phil Huffines, who is a, a businessman in Texas, whose car dealership, ran a series of ads that are like plastered forever in the memories of everyone who lived in the DFW area in the late 90s, early 2000s. And in a CNN interview a few days ago, he said this, when one looks objectively at who can beat Biden, it's going to be DeSantis. We already had a match with Biden and Trump. Trump turns out Democrats better than anybody.

DeSantis will be able to articulate more clearly what Republicans stand for, and he's not going to be bogged down and other stuff that Trump brings to the election. I don't think that was an illogical thing to think a year ago, right? Because it is true that Trump turns out the dims. The idea that like the Santas isn't going to get bogged down and shit has become kind of fundamentally silly. Like he's gotten bogged down in the fact that a lot of his, you know, backers are invested in culture, warship that does not sell well on an national level. This whole like anti trans crusade, he's on the anti woke shit is not a big vote getter. It just gets the base behind you and like,

you're never going to beat Trump in a race to the base, you know, Trump has the core of the hard right Republican party in his pocket. And they're not going to like move on from anybody. The Santas' hope should have been like going after independence, people on the edge, people who are like unhappy with Biden. And I think when you pick this sort of like hate crusade, it hasn't worked well. But Huffines decided that like, yeah, this guy, this is the due to as a shot. I think he can actually like pull it out from Trump. I think he's got the ability to like get a lot of people in the middle or close to the

middle. This has been proven kind of absurd over the last couple of months of stagnating poll numbers. Huffine says that the governor recently held a meeting with about 150 Texas Republicans in Dallas where he quote, impress them with his stamina, youth, and performance in recent Florida state elections. And there's a number of reasons to think that this is a bad strategy that like really laying on his performance in the last Florida election is like a good way for him to win support. One of these has to do with the fact that like Florida is the national watchword for crazy,

right? Like the rest of the country. Yeah, even a lot of conservatives, when they're talking about madness in America, they talk about Florida. Like Florida man is an archetype. And like, yeah, there's a lot of right-wing culture warriors who like Ron's immigrant and anti-LGBT policies,

but moderates and swing voters. The people, he has a chance of pulling away from Trump. Like, if you tell them, I want to make new Hampshire more like Florida, most swing voters are going to be like, that sounds like hell. Like, I don't want to be anything like that place. Like what a horrible, what a horrible idea. This is a sentiment that you will find among Republican thought leaders, quote, one Republican consultant who has worked on presidential campaigns that DeSantis was to making a classic governor's mistake by talking extensively about his past accomplishments.

Yeah. Put bluntly people in Ohio or Iowa do not want to be Florida. They don't care about Florida and they are tired of hearing about Florida. Um, yeah, because he's he's so reliant on the types of coverage to come out during the past two years of legislative stuff. He's done in Florida. And he's, I guess, forgetting the overall view that people have of Florida divorced from his own administrative changes. Yeah.

It's not like people are moving in droves to Florida, because he's defeated the woke menace and he's created a paradise. Like he's getting high on his own supply a little bit. He's getting high on his own supply. It bit. He's getting high on his own supply. It's one thing, there's a degree of his campaign that's focused on what he calls the Florida miracle, the fact that Florida economically weathered COVID pretty well. And again, this would be a stronger point

if Florida's economy was booming and everywhere else was bad. But the US economy overall, in terms of the numbers that economists care about, you know, economists care about at least is like doing reasonably well. And like of the shit that is bad in the US economy, it's not any better like inflation. It's not better, markedly, better in Florida than it is in Iowa, right?

There's just not a good case to be made because like when you're not, when you can't really drive the economic point home, when you can't be like, look at how much better floor is doing than your home. You know, it's a fucking paradise compared to the shitty economy in Ohio. That's an argument you can make if there's any evidence for it. But when you're like, you can't really make the economic argument, it all comes down to culture war stuff.

And most Americans don't want this culture war shit going on in their backyard. Because it's like a gross, weird pain in the ass. So right now, the bulk of DeSantis' support comes from higher income, old guard Republicans. The kind who were lukewarm for Trump from the beginning, and the kind who point out rightfully that he didn't win against Biden at this time for new blood. This is true, but current polling indicates it's not what most GOP voters want, which is kind of the big problem

the Republicans have is that this is why Trump's definitely going to win, you know, as the primary campaign is that like the hardcore of the GOP cannot be overcome by the moderates because the the hardcore is so in lockstep about what they want and what they want is Trump. The moderates don't have control of the party, but the moderates are the ones who can actually win a general election. So yeah, it's a tough situation for them to be in. And one of the things that kind of shows how fucked Ron is, is that like, Ron won re-election in Florida in his last gubernatorial campaign by about 20 points a year or so ago. In Florida, Trump

currently has a 20 point lead on him. Not great. Not great. Yeah. Yeah. That's a disaster. Like because again, not only like, should you be able to bring in your home state as a sitting governor, but like it shows that Ron is not popular because of his legislative achievements. He's popular because Florida is just that right wing, right? Like that's like currently like the electoral state or status of Florida is very conservative and so Ron won by an overwhelming margin. But that doesn't mean people love him. They definitely like Trump more than they like him. Bad situation to be in and a number of early backers and DeSantis's orbit have begun to acknowledge this reality. I'm going to quote from NBC News here. Yeah, there are a number of people who grumbling about it.

No doubt a DeSantis donor said there is an overall sense, including with me that he just has not ignited the way we thought he would. And I find that really interesting because you get versions of that a lot that like we were expecting him to really take off as soon as he started campaigning and he hasn't. And that was our only strategy. You get this and like if you read interviews with like folks who were in the DeSantis orbit and people because a number of his early backers have like peeled away and rescinded their endorsements and given them the Trump, it was this this hope they had that like once as

soon as he's out in front of America, Americans are going to love this guy because he's all the good stuff about Trump with none of the baggage. And that was just fundamentally disastrously wrong. And I think one of the things we're starting to see is that the DeSantis people didn't have another plan for how to get this guy elected. Like their plan was that we think that Trump's policies are popular, but everyone doesn't like Trump. And no, that's actually not accurate. The opposite of true, almost like some of them just like

Trump as a person. Yeah, a lot of them don't care about what he's done. They like the fact that he owns the lips, right? They're not thinking about it. He's a compelling character. Yeah. Decentess is a void of charisma. He is, he is not a compelling character. He's actually like, he's good at being like an administrator in like, like, he's like, he's very successful in doing bad things. Right. And he's a guy you make your chief of staff if you're the president. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. He's not like a, he's not a compelling character like the way Trump is.

No. And it's, it's again, it's so fascinating to me. It says a lot about like the degree of bubble that all of the political class are in. And when I say the political class, I mean the people, the fairly small number of people in the left and the right, liberals and conservatives who work on political campaigns, right? Because it's actually a pretty small community of people, of the folks who do the different jobs that are running political campaigns and that are like working as the age and legislative assistance and all that stuff

for elected leaders. And because to me, to just a guy sitting out there, like I'm worried about Ron because what he's doing in Florida, but from the moment I saw the guy speak, I was like, well, this man has no charisma whatsoever. And if you can't think about like how a guy could attract voters, if there's nothing that seems appealing

about a candidate to you, if you can't understand their charisma, that's probably a good sign that they can't get elected. I am not mystified by why any president who was one in my lifetime won, right? George W. I've been in a room with George W. Bush and watched him spoke in an immediately made sense why people fucking love George W. Bush. He hasn't, he had an attitude. He had an air that put people at ease. He was good at putting on a character that people found

appealing in that time and place. There's a reason why so many voters who loved him, you know, especially after the first campaign where it was kind of a, but like there's a reason why so many voters who loved him, you know, especially after the first campaign, where it was kind of a, but like there's a reason why he got reelected. Like there's, and it's the same thing with like Bill Clinton, right? You watch old videos of Bill Clinton on the campaign trail before he was president.

You can see the charisma. You can see the way he connects to audiences. You can see the things about him that people find appealing. There's not a mystery. It's not mysterious why Obama got elected. He's a deeply charismatic man. And Joe needed a little bit of help. That's why he lost so many presidential campaigns beforehand.

But next to Donald Trump, he seems like a much more appealing person. I'm not mystified. And I'm not mystified by why Trump got elected. Next to Hillary Clinton, Trump felt not like a politician, not like the same people who would let us down. There was this, this degree to which like you should never be, you should, if you're looking at like whether or not someone can win an election, you should never be like, well, I don't get it, but I guess maybe they have, they must have some sort of charisma because everybody's talking about them

as a serious candidate. Now, honestly, if you can't see anything about appealing about a candidate, then that might be a good sign that they're doomed. And I think DeSantis is fucking doomed. And this is kind of a thing that a lot of his early backers has started to realize, one DeSantis aligned operative told NBC,

from my understanding, if we don't see a bump in the polls, we're basically going to shut down his early backer of society started to realize one dissantist aligned operative told NBC from my understanding we don't see a bump in the polls were basically going to shut down the idea of a national operation. This is really something that like we're probably going to see I wouldn't be surprised if he kind of has a blowout politically pretty early in the the primary season next year because he raised a lot of money earlier in his campaign he raised about 20 million or so between mid May and the end of June of this year, which actually put him ahead, fundraising wise, of Trump by about two million or so, but the Trump campaign ended last quarter with twice as much cash on hand as Ron alongside a still

dominating lead in the poll. So Ron has raised a lot of money, which kind of speaks to the number of sort of like Republican, you know, institutional backers who hope that he could win where Trump had failed, but he blew all that shit and it didn't get him anything, right? Like he didn't raise a, like he, he, he, he, he crept up a teeny amount in the polls, but he's still like tied for second with Donald Trump, despite blowing all of that money. And I think we're going to reach a point pretty quickly where if he doesn't immediately take, you know, a state or two or three from Trump and the early primaries, any kind of hope he has for further donations is going to dry up because like, why would you keep wasting that money? We all saw how

much money got wasted trying to take Trump out of the primaries in 2016. I do think people are going to be a little more gun shy this time. There have already been a number of recent layoffs of major staffers by DeSantis. He's kind of purged a big chunk of the people who started his campaign. One of the things that's a little interesting about him and his political career is that as a politician, he has always been kind of noted as kind of weird within Florida politics because every election he's politician, he has always been kind of noted as kind of weird within Florida politics, because every election he's had, he's had an entirely new team of people.

He does not work with the same people twice. He does not have like bring people back for his campaigns, which is really unusual in US politics for a successful politician. When you win, you tend to bring him back a lot of the same people who helped you win the last time. And so the fact that Ron doesn't do that, that he's like got such basically a hundred percent churn in his teams. So just a couple of things.

One, he's not great to work with. And two, the people who work with him and have been successful and are good don't see him as someone with national potential, right? They don't want to keep working with him because then they get kind of trapped in the loop of being a desantis guy. They want to move on somewhere else because they think governor is as high as this guy can go.

Like that is kind of one of the things that you see when you note this dude has such total turnover in his fucking teams. Now again, for all of the money that he spent, Ron's polling numbers have changed basically nil from when he announced his candidacy, according to New York magazine kind of collated a bunch of this together. And the real, real clear politics average of polls starting July 1st, 2022, Trump had a

34-point lead over Ron DeSantis and 52.8% of the vote in national surveys with DeSantis at 18.5. At present, he's got Trump's lead over to Santa. So a year ago, Trump had a 34-point lead over to Santa. Now he's at 32, which is not the speed of movement that you want to see after a year of effectively campaigning. On the national surveys, DeSantis has gone from 18.5% to about 21%, which again, is just kind of like a disastrous rate of change. Now, this is just one poll. There's a potentially outliers here. I've seen other polls that show DeSantis at more like 12% and tied

with Vivek Ramaswamy, who is another GOP candidate, like the fact that Vivek, who is not nearly the kind of national name that DeSantis is, is tied with him, and some polls now, is fucking disastrous. He and Trump are pretty close in terms of funding. Vivek has raised only a fraction of what DeSantis has raged. So that's a pretty bad sign. Kind of a fucking disaster. One major area in which Ron lags behind Trump is his ability to draw interest and what amounts to free advertising from the media. Um, Trump famously got about a billion dollars in free publicity in 2016 thanks to relentless media coverage of his every move, Gaffin speech. He understood it didn't matter if it was negative. It didn't matter that they were shit talking me what matters that they're

keeping my face out front, right? This is a thing that will bring me support, it will bring me donors, it will make my supporters see me as like this kind of gladiator fighting for them. He leaned into this shit. On the surface, Ron and Trump are kind of the same in their approach to the media and that if you go to a Santa speech, you go to a Trump speech, they're going to call the media, the enemy of the people or some variant thereof. They're going to talk about the need to control the press. They're going to like support authoritarian measures against like free, you know, the free press.

Like again, if you're kind of just looking on the surface, it seems like they have the same attitude towards the media, but the way they treat journalists is completely different in that the Santas has no strategy with the media. He just attacks them. If you're, if you're right wing media, if you're some podcaster, he likes, he'll go on your show, he'll talk to you, but he ignores the liberal media. He ignores the mainstream media, but that's different from having a tactic for dealing with them.

Trump has a strategy with the media. He will howl that they're the enemy of the people in front of crowds. He'll talk about locking up journalists, but if you like read articles about him after a speech or whatever, he always gives the press their time. He knows a lot of these guys by name.

He has relationships with reporters. He's had relationships with like Maggie Haberman of the Times. Um, he's, he's able to be like friendly with these people and social with them, which isn't like, it's not doing that to be a good person. He's doing it because like he wants them to feel comfortable around him and cover him. And, and like, and this is, this is the thing that he's been doing longer than he's been a politician. Trump is primarily like a media guy. Like he is, he is someone he's been doing longer than he's been a politician.

Trump is primarily a media guy. He is someone who's been able to very successfully manipulate public image and manipulate media in his favor for years, especially as like, he's not like a good business man. He's like a con man who's like really good media. He's a good promoter. So he knows how to do this. DeSantis has none of this background. So he's just trying to copy like the hostile vibe of Trump without understanding the actual like media backing

that Trump puts into his relationship with like advertising and with having, you know, any amount of coverage that will get Republicans to be like, oh, this is a guy that's worth voting for. Yeah. And we'll also that will the kind of coverage that will make independence pay attention to him. Right. A big thing, part of how a lot of negative media coverage worked for Trump is that people would just see his name and the fucking news. And, you know, so they would wind up reading and listening to a lot of what he had to say. And because like, you know, he's getting so much coverage

and because all of these media outlets have one of, one of present the image of being unfair and unbiased. Like when Trump would go out and sit down with the New York Times, sit down with the Post, sit down with, he would often get coverage that like, let him say his piece, let him make his case. Like they would, because they didn't want to feel like they were being biased and he was giving them

some of his time. But when you just cut the media off, like the Santas has done, you don't get that from them. You don't get any of like the benefit of this sort of like idea of impartiality, which cuts down on your ability to actually like reach people who might be converted to vote for you. This is highlighted particularly well in a segment from a recent New York Times article on DeSantis's difficulty getting press coverage. A sign to cover the re-election campaign of Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, Miles Cohen, a young ABC news reporter, found himself stymied. The governor would not grant him an interview.

Aides barred him from some campaign events and interrupted his conversations with supporters. When Mr. Cohen was finally able to ask a question about the governor's handling of Hurricane E and Mr. DeSantis shouted him down, stop, stop, stop, and scold with the media for trying to cast aspersions. The DeSantis campaign then taunted Mr. Cohen on Twitter, prompting a torrent of online vitriol. So on election night, Mr. Cohen decamped to a friendlier environment for the news media. Mar-a-Lago, where former president Donald J. Trump greeted reporters by name, he came up to us, asked how the sandwiches were is where and took 20 questions, Mr. Cohen recalled. Mr. Trump, who heckled the fake

news in his speech that evening, elevated media bashing into a high art for Republicans. But ahead of the next presidential race, potential candidates like Mr. DeSantis are taking a more radical approach, not just attacking nonpartisan news sources, but out ignoring them all together. And yeah, I think that kind of like gets at the core of, of what a bad strategy this is. And it shows all of the Republicans right now, because of Trump's success in 2016, which we do after a member was not based on converting a majority of Americans. It was based in part on like the electoral system and, and just raw luck that shit broke the way it did. But they are looking at like his success in 2016 and trying to copy that.

But it's like a cargo cult thing, right? They don't actually understand what he did that worked. They see him bashing the media in his speech. Just they're like, well, I'm going to be even harder. I'm not going to talk to the media at all. And it's like, well, you have eliminated for yourself the primary benefit that you're up through from this. Um, yeah, I think the Kaga quote description is great. They're like they're trying to

to have the appearance of doing the Trump thing without understanding why the thing worked. And like also importantly, it's not like 2016 anymore. As much as it feels like 2016 was here that never ended, actually a lot has changed and also a lot of media has gotten a bit wise to the tactics that Trump did. They're no longer going to be blasting all of his speeches every time he says something outrageous, because they know that's part of his strategy. So, like, the same tactics, if the Sandist thinks he's going to get publicity for saying some horrible thing in his speech, the media knows what's up now.

They've already seen this playbook get played. It's it's, you can't treat it like it's eight years ago. Yeah, I think a good example of this is in 2016, if it had come out, if Joe Biden had been the front writer, say he beats, you know, Hillary Clinton, but everything else was the same. So he's the, he's the democratic primary guy. Say it comes out that his son has been smoking crack with prostitutes and like there's pictures of his hog everywhere And he was involved in so he gets charges against him for committing a couple of crimes That might sink a presidential campaign in 2016 Nobody gives a shit about Hunter Biden like zero moderates

Not a single vote is being changed as a result of the Hunter Biden situation in 2020. For it's a different landscape and these people haven't this is a good thing. I am frightened for when a new, you know, there's another coup in conservative politics and somebody understands that it's a different year. Yeah. Yeah. But we are we are fortunate at this moment. And you know who else is fortunate? Who's that, Robert? The sponsors of this podcast, they're fortunate to have great pitchmen like James Stout. James, why don't you tell the people which meal box subscription will finally

cure the knowing pit of anxiety at the center of their life and bring them both peace and the love of Jesus Christ. Yeah, absolutely. We're pretty gonna have to, we're gonna have to bleed some shit out here, but absolutely not. When the, I personally love, been a big chicken wing fan my whole life

until the baby's arms from the apron arrived. Yeah, they are delicious little fatty arms from freshly harvested babies. And I've felt better inside and out since I started eating children. Yeah, just remember our motto, uh, nothing's wafficking like human trafficking shit. Go to go to HelloFresh.com, use promo code children arms for a 10% discount.

Blue blue, blue apron. Actually cut HelloFresh there. They're giving us a lot of money. It's blue apron. We shit on. a little fresh there. They're giving us a lot of money. It's blue apron we shit on. Ah, we're back and we're thinking about

how there's one food box company who's been accused of a lot of malfeasance and another food box company who are, I think it's safe to say, Christlike, you know, honestly. And Jesus inspired to, at the very least. Yeah, absolutely. But the reason Jesus actually rose from the dead was to consume a breakfast.

That's right. That's right. Bible apron. Jesus, big omelet guy, huge omelet guy. Anyway, I don't know. That's not really a joke. So, Ron DeSantis has long ignored any media, not guaranteed to be fondingly indulgent of him for political reasons. This worked well in Florida. He's been able to get by by attacking

centrist and liberal media and embracing a constellation of far right podcasters and Fox news. But Florida is not the United States and a governor's race is not a federal election. He simply can't succeed against Trump with the same tactics that worked in Florida's or against Florida's enemic state democratic party. When he's tried to rebuke the naysayers who see his costs as largely doomed, DeSantis has tried to publicly downplay the significance of national polls. This is one of my favorite things.

Whenever people point out like, your polls have not moved in a year and you've spent millions and millions of dollars, it would be like, I don't trust those polls. Those polls don't really matter. You can't trust the poll. Look at how wrong the polls were in 2016. He's called articles.

I've seen him use that line a lot. Look how wrong the polls were in 2016. Okay, Ron. Yeah, I don't think they were not off by 34 points. Yeah. Yeah. You can see clearly how he's making his case currently to donors in private because a

memo that he's sent out to a bunch of his high dollar donors leaked recently, there's been a number of websites that have written about it. But we have like this memo, which is fascinating. It was sent out to a bunch of big dollar donors to a super PAC. So these are the people who are not limited by like campaign contributions because it's to a super PAC. So these are like the thick pockets people. So we get an idea of how he is marketing

his campaign right now that it's in a crisis. And it starts with a state-of-the-race update with a subtitle, the ballot is very fluid. Early state voters are only softly committed to the candidates. They select an ballot question this far out, including many Trump supporters. Our focus group participants in the early states even say they don't plan on making up their

mind until they meet the candidates or watch them debate. Well we know Trump's floor is 25%, that leaves three quarters of the electorate willing to consider other viable options. What has not changed are the candidates who are realistically being courted by the electorate. As it has been for the last year, Trump and the Santas remain the only viable options for two thirds of the likely Republican primary electorate. While Tim Scott is under serious look at this stage as bio is lacking, the fight that our electorate is looking for in the next president, we expect Tim Scott to receive appropriate

scrutiny in the weeks of head. We found low to no interest in Vivek, Berga, and Nikki, while too many voters will not consider Penser Christie for them to be remotely viable. Now, I agree about Penson Christie. Neither of those people is going to be the primary candidate. But again, Vivek in some polls is right up there with a Rhonda Santa. So, yeah.

Note that neither of them's gonna win. Great, great sign. Yeah. The memo goes on to note, and to sort of admit that their efforts and other primary states have hit a wall. And they're basically like, we're giving up an Iowa and and Ohio kind of. We're not going to be putting new resources into them. We're just going to throw everything we've got into new Hampshire. There's a couple of reasons for this, but I think it's

largely that they don't think they can win in those other early states and they know they desperately need an early wind have any hope of building up momentum. Yeah. Yeah. Language like this from the memo has to have experienced Republican politico's nervous. While Super Tuesday is critically important, we will not dedicate resources to Super Tuesday that slow our momentum and new Hampshire. We expect to revisit this investment in the fall.

I'm sure you will. Not a great sign, guys. stay that slow our momentum in New Hampshire. We expect to revisit this investment in the fall. I'm sure you will. Not a great sign, guys. The memo wall. I'm sure you'll be revisiting a lot of things in the fall. Yeah. Yeah. The memo also claims governor to Santis

and his messenger thriving in town hall engagements. So basically, when Ron gets in front of people, they see his magnetic charisma. They really like him once he gets a chance Ron gets in front of people, they see his magnetic charisma. They really like him once he gets a chance to shine in front of them. Now, there's been no evidence in polling. Uh, he's been in front of people quite a bit and he's not very impressive. Most of the social media response to his public appearances have been people making fun of the way he eats in public. Like, there's like six or seven different videos out that are him trying to eat something

and looking like a goober and people making fun of him. Whereas, like, again, Trump has, because he's actually charismatic, Trump can like sit in a truck and look like a doofus playing truck driver and everybody's like, look at that guy. Even people who hate him are like, well, that's kind of endearing.

Look at him. He's hogging the horn. He's pretended to be a big truck driver. You know, meatball Ron. I mean, we call him meatball Ron because of a food related gaff. Putting Ron to. Putting Ron to. He's just a disaster in public. There are some useful bits in this leaked document. This is the part of the document where the DeSantis campaign is like trying to lay out what they see as his assets as a candidate.

And again, the goal of this is to get big dollar donors to give him more money. So this is them making the case as to why Ron is worth further investment. We found that when voters hear about the governor's bio principally as a dad and as a veteran, they like him and are open to hearing more about him. This says to say nothing of his success is on parental rights. His leadership bringing Florida's economy back during and after COVID, fighting a legal immigration and ensuring border security. That he's not just a fighter, but most importantly a winner.

A major paid media effort featuring the governor's bio will help us to convert. Three big issues that, you know, that's again, so the three big issues he's highlighting, that he says like, these are the things that are going to get voters onto us. Enough of them that we can overcome Trump's 25% floor are anti-immigration stuff. Well, I'm sorry, man, Trump's got you beat there. The wall is his, right?

Decentre has tried to go one step further, and if you saw his press conference in Texas where he has a good, the birthright citizenship thing. No, deshooting people. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think he said quite drop a few of them. Yeah, he's trying to, but again, he hasn't just talked about what's interesting to me.

He opens this memo by starting like, look, Trump's got a 25% floor of support, but there's that other three quarters of people we can get. And yet, when you are talking about's that other three quarters of people we can get. And yet when you are talking about gunning people down at the border, you're just trying to take that 25% from Trump. You are not reaching out to like the people who are less maniac, right? He's trying like, again, it's just bad strategy.

It's a bad strategy within the context of what his people have laid out as a strategy, right? Like, if the good strategy is go for the other 75% of the voters, well, you probably don't do that by promising to be even harder on the border. Yeah, anyway, and he doesn't really even have like, obviously Trump didn't have a coherent border policy either, but he had a thing, right? Like he had a sort of shiny thing that he had three words that were very powerful. Bill the wall. Yeah.

And if DeSantis thinks Americans are ready for shoot them all, right? You can try that. But he's not. He's like trying to do this weasel. Anyway, it's just not, there's just not any evidence of an actual tactic there of an understanding of like what people find appealing and how to highlight it. He's not doing it yet. He's not, he's not, if you were a donor, he's not exhibiting the idea that he knows how

to copy what Trump did and do it one better. Like your goal here at, if you're running against Trump based on kind of what they lay out is what their strategy needs to be, which is get the other 75% of people to back us instead of Trump. You need to be, you don't need to be yes-anding. You are acknowledging by laying that out as the strategy that Trump, his appeal is, there's that he's got a dedicated base of appeal, but it's limited. And so if you are trying to make the case that you're more electable than him, you need to show how you have a wider base of like a wider appeal than he does. And you don't do that by being like, I'm even shittier on the border.

Like anyway, just a bad strategy. Since he doesn't have a strong case to make an absolute numbers, Ron's campaign has made the call to push heavily on the forgotten man narrative, arguing a soft conspiratorial view that a cabal of shady elites is colluding to ruin American greatness. Here's another quote from that memo. Equally important, we will offer an economic message to disrupt and win economy voters. American decline was not an accident, it was a choice. Our elites do not consider themselves Americans so much as they think of themselves as citizens of the world. Their loyalty is not to a discreet nation, but to the bottom line on a balance sheet,

and the decisions they made in leading this country over the past few decades has reflected that worldview. They have governed in their interests rather than ours. And I do think there's a germ of something interesting there. There's this idea of like economic populism, which was a factor in Trump's campaign. It's interesting to me how close Ron's idea is to like outright anti-Semitic conspiracy theory language. Like, yeah, they don't recognize borders.

They're citizens of the world, which is a, you know, very similar to a lot of the arguments that, like, the Nazis would make about the Jews, is that like, they're a borderless people who exist within this, like, financial system, rather than, like, our national, like, co-citizens, right? It's interesting to me that he's got that, this, in that memo. Again, I don't think it's a good strategy. I think the way Trump, Trump's just better at doing this, right? At like, he's made himself like, there's a lot of people who consider Trump

like their kind of guy like a working class dude, even though he's a billionaire with a gold toilet. I don't see that DeSantis has the ability to like win that kind of support from working people. No, he tried really hard to go to push his like his military record as part of a like, yeah, sort of I'm a normal dude kind of think, but it doesn't seem to stuck landing at all. Like again, he just, yeah, I just did it in a clumsy and an awkward way. Yeah, I mean, in part because like the thing he's got to hang on, like that he was this

fucking dude doing sketchy shit at Guantanamo isn't like even conservatives don't feel great about that, right? Yeah, he tried earlier to push like he was a legal he was a Jag Officer like attached to a seal team. Yes, I had to call himself a seal. Yeah, I think he like I think he flew a little bit too close to the sign on that one. And again, like he fucked up and alienated the people he was trying to appeal to. And I also, I do kind of wonder. It was like sort of taken as red for some time that having military experience was like a positive aspect in a campaign that it would like win you a lot of conservative voters and whatnot.

I don't know that that's really the case. Yeah, the, uh, I don't see a lot of conservative voters and whatnot. I don't know that that's really the case. Yeah, the, I don't see a lot of evidence for it. Like people certainly like shout it when they serve, but I don't know that it really works for them. I think that's more of a, like I don't know if I'm using a right phrase and he had a traditional Republican value. Yeah.

Like a post Trump Republican value. Because Trump is like on record is being like, no, only idiots serving the military on military, I'm a smart man. And like that didn't seem to hurt him at all. But you know who else hates veterans. Oh yeah, several of the food box delivery companies. They actually, they just won't just give them food. They are actively, every one of our supporters

is wiping their ass with whatever flag the Navy uses. I assume they have a flag, right? Oh, definitely. Yeah, yeah. Special Navy flag. It works underwater too. Very special flag.

That's good. That's good. An underwater flag. That's what we need to bring nationalism to the fish. We're back. So I wanted to close out by kind of looking at a segment of DeSantis supporters. The find people behind my favorite reliable media institution, legalinsurrection.com. Oh, good. Now this is a kind of libertarian

right themed news website. They're like, boy, I do want you to look up legalinsurrection.com because their website's very interesting. It starts with this like phonetic breakdown of the phrase legalinsurrection, like that's their logo, then includes like a definition arising up against established authority, rebellion, revolt, in conformity with or permitted by law. That's a nonsense phrase, because there's no such thing as a permitted legalinsur. We had this argument actually, like back in around 1860 and guess where it ended. Like I'm not saying it's bad to have an insurrection. I think some insurrections are potentially really good, but they're never legal.

Otherwise, they're not an insurrection. Yeah. That's a silly idea. The insurrection is illegality. Yeah. Like one way or the other, I think. The silly idea. That's the silly idea. The silly idea is illegality. Yeah. Like, one way or the other, I think it's this idea, these people who like pretend to be libertarians, they still have this like sacred sort of reverence for the law. They can't just say like, yeah, I believe in overthrowing the government. No, no, no. What I'm doing is actually obeying the real law. The people in charge are obeying laws that are illegal and fake, but like, I know the

real law. So what I'm'm not i'm not a criminal like now i'm and just be like a man i'm a criminal i want to i want to overthrow the government you know what's cool is being a criminal who wants to overthrow the government we all love crib this is my star wars is the biggest movie series we love criminals who went over and throw the government that's who the founding fathers of this country war is very american thing to love you shouldn't have to be like no but ours is a legal and so That's who the founding fathers of this country war. It's a very American thing to love.

You shouldn't have to be like, no, but ours is a legal answer. Oh, fuck it. You're a criminal. You're cool. You're fucking Al Capone like, yeah, it's very, very cocked to have a legal answer. Yeah, it is very cocked. Anyway, here's an article from legalinsurrection.com who bafflingly backs Ron DeSantis. Florian government Ron DeSantis is serious about restoring executive branch agencies and

rebuilding trust with the American people who have been shocked and appalled at the weaponization of government by the Biden administration. And before that, the Obama administration, the federal government, specifically the executive branch alphabet agencies, has been completely corrupted by the Obama Biden and now the Biden Harris administrations We all know it and we're all disgusted and disheartened by the myriad ways the Obama administration targeted political opponents That's why Trump's 2016 campaign to drain the swamp was so potent We knew the depth and breadth of the corruption the partisan banana republic style attacks on political opponents and we wanted it Stapped unfortunately Trump was not able to drain the swamp at all, not even a little bit. So when Biden took office

in 2021, he just got to work picking up Obama's attacks on dissent with the deep state still fully embedded through the executive branch. Having spent the intervening years openly working as the resistance to Trump's the duly elected president's agenda. God, it's such first off, it's very funny that they're trying to like make the resistance to be anything but like Twitter, lips. Yes. Like, I do find it funny that they're like,

fucking trying to treat this like a boogie man. I'm just, yeah, like leading the marquee through to through to, I don't know, far as social, during blowing up fucking train tracks is extremely amusing to me. It's just sad, but it does get it something, right? This attitude among a lot of Republicans, particularly the guys who really like DeSantis, that the deep state is really powerful. These um, federal law enforcement agencies are fundamentally like fighting against us,

and we have to build an ability to compete with them. And this is, I actually think, we've been mostly talking about like the weaknesses and the dumb shit about the Santas' campaign. I think a strength he has not, uh, uh, maybe capitalized on enough is this idea because this is something Trump proved he was unable to do. Like he, he didn't go in there and unseat the deep state. And DeSantis has actually been kind of effective at resisting the federal government and even sidelineing some federal agencies within Florida. And there's some actual like potential for strength here with Trump's base. I don't know that this gets you moderates, but like it's weird to me that he hasn't pushed this harder. Part of that may be the fact that he's like everything else really bad at it.

Kind of his strongest attempt to provide sort of a countervailing force to federal law enforcement was his activation of the Florida state guard, which 17 or so states have state guards. It's just kind of like a state version of an national guard potentially. Florida's had not been active in a while and he reactivated them claiming that it was going to be a force of volunteers

who could respond to hurricanes and other public emergencies. But what he was actually doing was trying to create a paramilitary organization. He is in the process of attempting to do this now. These people are undergoing like military training and whatnot. He's trying to get of attempting to do this now. These people are undergoing like military training and whatnot. He's trying to get them access to like weaponry, like this is potentially kind of concerning, but he's really fucking bad at it. There was a really

interesting New York Times article recently that kind of goes into the problems the Florida State Guard have had sort of spinning up. And it's a very funny read because it's like, it's like a little kids idea about how you would build a paramilitary organization. So on paper, the governor's office has said that one of the guards missions would be, quote, to ensure Florida remains fully fortified to respond not only to natural disasters, but also to protect its people and borders from illegal aliens and civil unrest. And then the New York Times article continues, that deployment this spring has been mired in internal turmoil, with some recruits complaining that what was supposed to be a civilian disaster

response organization had become heavily militarized, requiring volunteers to participate in marching drills and military-style training sessions on weapons and hand-to-hand combat. At least 20% of the 150 people initially accepted into the program dropped out or were dismissed. If you get into this, the people dropping out are like the veterans. They're like military officers and stuff who got into this thing. Then I was in the military for 20 years. I did deploy deployments here and here. I came into this thing and it's a bunch of civilians dressed as soldiers yelling at me to do pushups in March and a field and like trying to be

an asshole to me because they're angry that like I have military experience that they think they know better. Like it is like the volunteers said the training seemed poorly structured within an ordinary minimum amount of time spent as one of them described it marching in fields. Some of the men said that as veterans with years of experience in the military, they were offended when they were yelled at by junior instructors, acting like drill sergeants who disregarded their previous ranks. I find this really fucking funny.

If you guys seen those videos coming out about like, there are these classes where if you're like a rich or, you know, upper middle class dude, you can pay like 10 grand to spend the five days doing a fake version of the DCL's Hell Week. Like you roll it, you're like running incredible. Like yeah, you're like hitting stuff with big hammers. You're like crawling on your back through rocks. You're doing all these like shitty, painful exercises

while like some dude who probably fucking got another than honorable separation from the Marine Corps as a private second class, like screams at you a lot. And it's, you know, that's what you feel. You're leading a one wheel. If you see that rolling around on a one wheel, yelling at you that you're, you know, just like making up bullshit reasons to be angry at you because idiots, you just have it like, yeah.

It sounds like a weird mix of like, expensive larping and like a repressed kink thing for these guys. Yeah, that's what's happening. It's a real repressed kink. Yeah, yeah. I see a lot of guys who watch the scene of the movie Full Metal Jacket.

And number one, didn't watch all of it because like Arley, Ernie, or whatever's name was character there, like the really mean drill sergeant gets murdered after like emotionally abusing one of his recruits, like kind of a big part of the movie. But just saw him like making fun, like yelling at people and making up fun insults. And we're like,

well, that's got to be key to teaching people how to fight. Gareth, and have you seen Full Metal jacket? I have not seen Full Metal jacket. You'd actually probably like it. There's some interesting parts of that movie. Well, well shot. But yeah, I do think it's really funny. There's potentially, this is one of those things, potentially very

scary to have a far right elected leader building his own paramilitary force that is answerable only to him. That is a frightening thing. I'm not saying we shouldn't be concerned about him trying this, but he's so shitty. It's like dictator 101. Yeah. It makes sense that he would try it. I mean, I would never want to be a governor because I think that's a no moral thing to do. But if I was to be a authoritarian governor, I would have got my own hit squad. Step one, make your own army.

And it says a lot about Ron number one that of all of the different things he's tried to do, this is the only one that seems like, oh, you might actually be able to get a lot of Trump voters to switch over to you. If you promise them, I'm gonna do this nationwide, and you, as a guy who didn't join the army, but is pretty sure he would have been good at it,

can like become a militant commander and you're like state guard thing that I'm going to establish. You might get some votes, I don't think you'd win a lot of moderates, but you might get the base away from Trump, right? It's just so clearly a brown shirt's rip off. It's just like it's so blatant that it's like,

it's like he's like poorly copying someone else's homework. Yeah, I don't, a lot of his campaign has that vibe and he's like, he's poorly copying someone else's homework. Like, I don't know that this would work. And I still think he would have, it would be a long shot that he would have any chance of beating Trump. But if he were to be like, I'm going to establish a state guard

where conservatives can get access to military grade weaponry and the right to carry their handguns everywhere. Yeah. You might get, I don't, again, I don't think you win a general that way, but you might get the base away from Trump with that. It's at least more creative than anything else he's tried. Anyway, this is all a bad idea. I want to close by reading one last anecdote

from that New York Times article on Meatball Ron's attempt to make an army. A 51-year-old former Marine captain who had retired from the military with a disability and later joined the state guard also clashed with instructors during initial boot camp last month, raising concerns about the training. In an assault complaint followed with the Clay County Sheriff's Office, the man said he was accused by the state guard commander of being the leader of the group that had been

criticized in the organization and its leadership. He was then forcibly pushed into a van against his objections and driven to the command post, where he was fired and escorted off base of the nine original state guard recruiters and commanders who spent months recruiting for the organization fewer than a third remained. The staff director who had been a proportion of the less militarized version of the group appointed in January was removed from his post just two days before the inaugural graduation. The program's personnel director was fired this week. So, good. Sounds like it's going great over there in Florida. Sounds like meatball Ron knows how to

make an army. I don't know, folks, that's that's my episode on the Ron DeSantis campaign. And now we's doing, I hope you all enjoyed this little update. We're done. Cool. Stay tuned for a Vivek Ramaswani episode. Yeah, which is just going to be me making fart noises into the microphone. You'll get everything you need on Vivek here. Look, it's going to be Trump. Unless he dies, in which case, boy, that could be interesting. I mean, I just like, Decentis could have waited for years and then he could have had the backing of Trump to help. Yes, he, I don't, he's such a weird little power goblin. Cause like, if he was still me, try to do that.

Trump has gone back and forth on people in the past, but it's such a weird call to like make this doomed play it to build like this bad, like you're gonna piss some people off. Yeah. Why? Yeah, anyway. I remember us doing an episode not so long ago about Decentre's and being like,

well, he'll just wait for years until Trump's out to picture, but no, he fucking defied our expectations by torpedoing his own presidential chances. Yeah, and that's why I love him. he fucking defied our expectations by torpedoing his own presidential chances. Yeah, and that's why I love him. Sacred Skando, one of the best new podcasts of 2022, is back with a closer look at the darkness surrounding mega-church La Luz del Mundo and its leader, Nasson Joaquin Garcia. They believe that he was Jesus Christ on Earth.

It wasn't even so much that he liked sex. He wanted something to pray. It's the largest cult in the world that no one has ever heard of. For three generations, the Luz del Mundo had an incredible control on his community, that began in Mexico and then grew across the United States, until one day. A day of reckoning for the man whose millions of followers called him, the Apostle. Their leader was arrested, and survivors began to speak out about the sexual abuse, the murder and corruption. This is just a business, and their product are people. Listen to all episodes now on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or whatever you get your podcasts. 911, what's your emergency? You shot her! Oh, my God! It's a nightmare we could never have imagined. An Achiller? Who is still on the loose? My small town rocked by murder.

There are certain murders I'm scared to discuss. In the 1980s, we're in high school losing friends, teachers, and community members. One after another, after another, for a decade. We weren't safe anywhere. We're teenagers terrified to leave our own homes. Would we be next? Who is killing all the kids? And why?

In that moment, I saw rage. And why do some want the town secrets to stay dead and buried forever? I'm not sure why you're digging up all this old stuff again, but I'd be careful. Don't say I didn't warn you, Nancy. Listen to the murder years on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm not a semi-al of a Zerogondrake, but I made a podcast called Bomming about absolutely tanking on stage. I'm talking about your most man-ass-er-roll experience as a performer. I tell gnarly stories, and I talk to friends about their worst moments of bombing in all

sorts of ways. Bomming on stage, bombing in public, bombing in life, like the time I stole a girl's phone during a set and she dumped on stage and threw a big A-maker punch to my nose. I wanted to know what's the worst way they ever bombed or performed way too drunk or high. There was every time where they thought they were going to crush and they stunk it up. Subscribe to my podcast, Bombing with Eric Andre to hear more crazy stories from me and my friends.

I'll have guests like Sam Jay, who will say Sloan, Michelle Butteau, Max DeMarco, DJ Doug Bound, Saturday Night Live, Sarah Sherman, and more! Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart. And you know, when things fall apart, one of the few things that can keep you on an even keel, you know, keep you feeling like there's something that makes sense in the world. It's good TV, you know, and then we can all agree, no job more important than making television, because it's really for a surprising amount of the population, the only thing keeping them on the ragged edge of sanity. And obviously, if you're at all aware of the news, both the writers Guild, the WGA, and the actors Guild, Saga After, have both separately, although they are now, you know, on strike at the same time, have both kind of independently announced strikes after a breakdown in negotiations

with the major studios. And to talk with me today about what's going on, what's it like being a writer on strike is my friend and one of the people who makes a show that helps keep me on the ragged edge of sanity. Soren Bowie. Soren. How you doing? Woo. You're simply the best. Hey, everybody. Hey, you better than all the rest. Oh, stop it, Tina. Stop it. Thank you guys.

Very good. Very good. See, how's it going? Soren, you are my former colleague at crack.com.net backslash, AOL. So does anyone there now? And you are also or at least before the strike hit, where a have been for the last several years, a writer on American dad.

One of the most consistently funny animated shows of like 20 years now, almost it's been on the air. Stop it. Stop it. Thank you. Robert Tina, you guys are the best. That's very nice of you. Thank you very much for saying that. It did cost a lot of money to get her in the studio today.

That's very kind of you to say. Yeah. I we try very hard, but it also has like a feel at the show of like the warden is watching. Like we're kind of allowed to do what we want. And it's great. You love your job. It's very obvious.

I think probably everyone there loves writing for that show. Most of the people I know who write for TV have the same attitude of like, wow, I can't believe I get to do this. But that attitude is great and it makes life livable, but what doesn't make life livable. And what makes the enjoyment of the job harder is starving to death, which is an increasing reality for a lot of writers.

Over the last like 10 years, so a decade ago, about 33% of TV writers got what was paid like the minimum rate, which is kind of the minimum rate you paid it, you get paid to get staffed on a union show. And the WGA says that about half of TV writers are at that point now. Writer pay has declined about 14% over the last five years, and that's with inflation. That's like, if you kind of take out inflation, right? Everybody's making a...

Yeah, with inflation, it's like 23%. Yeah, that's about 23%. Writer producer pay over the last decade with inflation backored in. So that sucks because people aren't watching 23% less TV. In fact, I think we're watching more TV than we ever have before. Like, so it, and I like, if you listen to the kind of numbers given by streaming platforms about how many people are watching, It sure doesn't seem like TV writers have been gotten 23%

worse at their jobs. So anyway, the WGA went into negotiations earlier this year and basically to kind of shorten it, we're asking for more money. More money in residuals, more money in upfront pay, changes to some policies that streamers were using to kind of avoid. There's been sort of this effort by streamers for a while now to kind of kill the concept

of a writer's room in a lot of shows and they have a couple of different sort of fucking ways to do that. I gotta say, Robert, it is a dream to come on a podcast with you because you do your fucking homework. I usually, I'm the one who has to explain all this stuff, but this is great. I'm loving where this is going. Go on, you're actually right.

Can you walk us through kind of what's been hacked? Because that's a thing that I think is sort of, you miss that on kind of the big level sort of, like, discussions of this is like, what, like, what a writer's room is and sort of what streamers have been trying to do to change that, because fundamentally, like, one thing people who know what they're talking about will point out is that like

movies are not that scripts don't matter, but it's like a director's medium. That's like the big sort of like guiding, you know, through the vision of like what a film is going to be. And TV is a writer-driven medium more often. You'll at least hear that a lot. And I kind of want to talk about like, what is a writer's room and what has been changing in terms of how studios have been trying to edge that concept out. Great question. So, so writers room traditionally, like you think back to broadcast television and it's hey day, the way a writer's room worked is you had probably, first of all, you're going to have like 20 to 22 episodes a season. And then within that, you've got a block of anywhere from like 10 to almost sometimes 20 writers.

And the reason that you have so many writers on a show like that is because while you're working on it, it's also in production. So as stories are being broken, and that means that there are rooms where people are creating a story together, as that's going on, there's like six other things going on, like you're gonna have,

you're probably filming during that time. And if that's your particular written by episode, like that's the episode, there's like six other things going on. Like you're going to have, you're probably filming during that time. And if that's your particular written by episode, like that's the episode with your name on it, you might be on set for that because you're going to be having to make changes on the fly while that's going on. There's table reads happening. There's joke punch ups happening, so there's generally a separate room for that. And so you need like a pretty big group of people to just make a show, to just write a show. And that's to keep the hours within like, to keep them bearable.

I mean, it doesn't even, you wouldn't even turn that into a nine to five generally. That's still a lot of hours with a lot of people, but at least it's bearable for everybody. Now streaming has tried to change that because they're tired of hiring so many writers and they're tired of paying writers. And so with streaming, there's different loopholes that they can get into, which is if you start creating a show, before it's even technically greenlit, you can start having writers' right episodes. But because it's not greenlit, you're not beholden to the same rules through the WGA.

You can start hiring people at a minimum, even if they are should be making more than that. And depending on what your position is as a writer, like you start as a staff writer, then you move up to story editor, then executive story editor, and you move up and up and up from there. Generally what happens is if you leave a show

as an executive story editor, you don't then go to another show and drop back down to staff writer. You maintain the position that you have because you've now learned the trade enough that usually you have a skill set that's valuable enough that you should be being paid for being an executive story editor. So what they're doing is they're making sure that people are not being paid for the roles that they generally have because they can do that before a show has been greenlit. And then they will say, we're going to write, like,

let's just write 12 episodes. And that's a lot, like, that's a whole season of television, but they're doing it before it's Greenlit. And then what happens is, you will have these writers who are burning the midnight oil trying to get this thing done and calling it a lot of favors from friends because you have a such a small group of writers.

You have maybe like in a, you know, pre-Greenlit room, you've got like three or four people trying to write an entire season of a show. And as they're writing it, they're like, they're calling in favor from friends to be like, well, you come edit this and stuff because you don't have enough people for everything. You have to break all these stories simultaneously. You have to know what's going on in each individual room, but you don't have enough bandwidth for all of that. So you're calling in favor from other people, like do we just come and like look at this?

Will you just take a look? Well, we need like eyes on this. And so you're calling in favor from friends, students have figured out that they can, they can just, you can ask people to do this essentially. It's like they can be found. Yeah, it's a natural part of the writing process. Every writer in every form of writing does a version of this.

And they're like, what if we did this to help to make it easier to start people? Yeah, exactly. And then what they would do, there's different tactics beyond that, which is like once those are, once those episodes are written, then maybe the studio will,

they can kind of pick and choose when they want to release that. They don't have like a, it's not like a broadcast television where everything gets released in the fall. It's just like you can choose when you want to release it. So maybe't have like a, uh, uh, it's not like a broadcast television where everything gets released in the fall. It's just like, you can choose when you want to release it. So maybe you wait a year or whatever. You release it and then you can release it in two seasons. So if you have 12 episodes, you can cut those into six six. So I fucking hate. And this is a little bit of a distraction, but like we miss by because we're not doing

seasons the way they used to, there's so much good shit we miss. Things like half the best episodes are Star Trek. We're just like, we have $40 to shoot this episode on. Like, how can we do with like three guys in a room? You know? I know. You're like, you miss out on those bottle episodes, those like little ones where you're just like,

or like that, if you think back to Breaking Bad, like there's the fly episode. Yeah, the fly episode, yeah. Oh, it's like the best episode of the show because you've got room to stop and breathe and like, you'll just characters. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, it's like, you lose out on all that. Then you can also, because you're breaking it up, you don't have to pay people to like

advance them to the next season. And then that would also be released over the course of like two years. And so you have a writer who's written for maybe like 11 weeks on something on a show. And then they don't know that they have that job again for another two and a half years. And so like there's no consistency, there's nothing is stable. And that makes it very, very difficult for writers to keep their jobs and maintain a writing job. It's this really fucked up situation in which I think the streaming era, in freeing sort of television from some of the way that sweeps used to work, the way that a lot of the way

that you would have to run shows and the way that they aired when you were doing it on like fucking cable and they're not supported, has allowed for kinds of TV shows and structures of shows that you never could have had, right? I was just, we're just watching the bear. Probably the standout episode of the bear from season two is this like episode about a family Christmas party

that's just this absolute like anxious nightmare that's an hour long episode, twice the length of a normal episode and oftentimes that's kind of a mixed thing with TV show but it works in this one. And the fact that it's so much longer actually like helps with like trans, you could you could only do that with shows that work the way they do in streaming. That wouldn't have been a thing that you would have gotten to do in 1993 probably. But while I think like there's a lot

of cool stuff structurally that's gotten to come out of that, it's also, it's made the compensation so much worse. It's made the job so much less reliable. It's really stark how much more difficult it's become to make a living in TV. Yeah. 100%. Well, TV is more popular than ever. Yeah. Yeah. That's like, it's making more money than it ever possibly has in the past. And certainly through streaming. Like they're not these these studios are not moving to streaming because like they they're early adopters of technology. The money is there. So they're going to streaming. And it's like they're making way more through streaming. But writers are getting

paid less and less because they're finding these like while West loopholes in streaming. Residuals is another one that's like a like, the way that residuals work is, is if you have a show that then gets played again through syndication or through streaming, you should then get a residual check for every episode that you wrote shows up on television. And it was very easy to track that as it would show up on like our show on American Dad.

I know that it's gonna get played on Cartoon Network. I know that it's going to get played on cartoon network. I know that it's going to get played at these other spots. The TBS will rerun it at some point. And I can I know when those are coming in with streaming. It's much more difficult to determine when somebody watched something. Not because those numbers don't exist, but because all these platforms that are created by studios will not give out that information. That information is like in a black box

where you have no idea how often a show gets streamed. There's a couple of reasons like people are speculating as to why that might be. One is that either shows are getting watched way more often and people are not getting the proper residuals that they should be, or that the whole business model doesn't quite work. Yeah, that's all I can.

Yeah. Yeah. And if you found out how little people were actually watching television, this whole, all investors, everything, the whole thing would collapse. I don't know which is true. I don't care. I just want to know what the numbers are.

So like a big part of this is the WJ asking different streaming platforms. You got to be more transparent. You got to tell us how well our show is doing so that we know if people are getting paid properly. Yeah, and it's, again, it would be one thing if like writers were getting less than ever and TV was just like dying as a thing, as a creative thing that people want. But there is the money.

We know where the money is going. The eight major Hollywood studio CEOs in 2021 made nearly three quarters of a billion dollars and annual salary, which is more than the value of what the WGA and SAG after want to take out of them and increase compensation for their members. For those eight guys, I'm gonna guarantee you, already a manual, the highest compensated of these CEOs, over at Endeavor, $308 million.

And like, I don't think he made any of your, he's not responsible for any of your favorite shows. Whatever like line in the great, made you laugh or cry, or whatever joke from American dad keeps you, makes you suddenly start like ballin' out laughing while you're driving down the highway. That was not already a manual. You know, not, not through the show's were endeavor, whatever. You know what I, you know what I'm trying to do here,

right? Yeah, yeah. Ted Sarandos, whatever, uh, fucking, you know, uh, Bob Eiger, um, all these guys, like they're, they're, I mean, fundamentally like Bob Eiger, one of the big things he did was push the flash movie out into theaters. Really put a lot of money into that. Thought it was going to be important for the brand going forward, lost so much money, lost like probably about as much money as like the writer's guild is asking for an increased compensation this year, like if they just hadn't made that movie. Um, so let's talk you guys went on strike. What has it been like two months now already?

Yeah, it's like day 84 something like that. Yeah, so a little more than two months. How are you feeling? Like what does it mean like physically to be on strike, like going out and picketing and stuff. Great questions, Robert. It's actually really nice. I don't want to say like I enjoy it because I'd rather be getting paid and not being freaking out about the fact that I don't have a job. But going out, it gives me a sense of purpose first, first, Vully, to get up and go out to the picket lines.

Yeah. And you're out there, you're marching around it, you choose your studio, like, from the majority of the time, I go to Sony or I go to Amazon. And I know the people there now. It's like going to the gym every day where you get to know the people there and then you build your community.

And so I've got this group of people that like, I go there, these are just people that like happen to talk to because like, we'd see a truck going and we're like, oh, I hope that's not a teamster truck, whatever. And then you just strike up a conversation when somebody starts talking. And then you find out that this person ran Malcolm

in the middle for eight years. And you're like, oh, okay. Cool. You know, people talk a lot about how the last writer's strike, which was kind of like, right when I was getting out of fucking high school, they're not far from that point. Like a year or two later,

had the last writer's strike was kind of what gave us the birth of like a lot of reality TV. You could almost argue. There was a degree to which it like was part of Trump's rise to prominence, right? Cause that's why the apprentice gets on air cause that's a way the studios can get around paying writers. But I also wonder on the opposite end,

like how many shows do we get because of connections people make out of the picket line because like folks meet each other and get talking. Yeah. I do wonder if that's like a thing. I guarantee it is. I mean, it is shocking how like how quickly you just come up with people and like the the the contact I should go.

It's not it's not supposed to be a networking experience, but it just ends up being that like you can't help it. Like you're just talking to people and then all of a sudden your jobs come up and you start talking about your work. And then people are like after a little while like, well, like you can't help it. Like you're just talking to people and then all of a sudden your jobs come up and you start talking about your work. And then people are like, after a little while, like, well, like send me something, like send me some of your writing. And then you just become buddies.

And like you start working on stuff accidentally together. And I guarantee that by the end of this, they'll be writing teams that didn't exist before. And there will be people who want to make stuff together. Plus, the studio pipeline will be empty. So they're gonna want to fill it with, they're gonna want to fill it. Yeah, when the strike ends and guarantee,

there's gonna be people from the lines who came up with stuff on the lines who are gonna be like, we've got lots. Like, what about this and be like, yes, that, buy it. We'll take that. And I, like, just kind of in general, the fact that, like, that's sort of the, the hope, right?

Like, that's actually the thing that can defeat these giant industry colossuses, not just like, right in TV shows with other people, but like the solidarity, like the fact that you're building connections with people, the fact that you, there's an understanding of shared interest. You're seeing this, especially like now that, like, sag after his join the strike, there's a lot of, a lot of people who are very famous and prominent talking about issues that go well beyond Hollywood, right? The incredible amount that executive pay and compensation has increased over the years. The fact that a lot of companies that used to do things of value and employ people

and good jobs have been hollowed out for the short term profits of, you know, culture capitalist whose job is to, you know, fucking suck money out and hand it to shareholders and shit. Like this is not just a, you know, a lot of this started in the fucking 90s. We've talked about like Jack Welch and GE and kind of like how that company was turned

from something that made stuff to something that made stuff to something that produced stock value and fired people. And you're getting that all across entertainment right now. And I think this is, I think, and this is something I think, kind of everyone knows on some level, this is an inflection point, right? You know, AI is a part of it, the fact that we're about to see them try to use this technology to cut down the number of people they have to pay even further. But it's like, this is bigger than Hollywood.

Hollywood is just getting a lot of attention because actors know how to get attention. That is the job. Yeah. That's, yeah, writers are good at building the narrative and writers are very good at getting attention. Exactly. Yeah. It's like, it was a, it's a worst case scenario, honestly, which is very good to get attention. Exactly, yeah. It's like,

it was a, it's a worst case scenario on a save for like, for the studios. Just, and just because it's no coincidence that UPS is going on strike, that all these companies are going on strike right now because the same things happening across the board, where it's like this consolidation of power

and then consolidation of money. And then it's just like, all that you are beholden to when you are at the top of these companies is the shareholders and like getting them money. And so when anyway you can do that, you do it. And a lot of times, will you do that

is that you just fuck everybody at the bottom and figure out how to carve out money from them and bring it rise it to the top. And so yes, I think that it's, what happened was the WGA went on strike. The WGA is a very strong good guild, a good union that like does not blink and and everyone saw that and immediately people were on the side of the WGA in a way that I think no one anticipated

that all everybody else in unions is like no, this is wrong. Like we should we're dealing with the exact same stuff and universally everyone seems to be on the side of unions right now. Then that's like, we should use that. Like we should, we should ride that wave a little bit. And absolutely, they should because there's so many things that are systemically broken right now. Just have us be the entertainment industry is the only one that I have it. Yeah. I have skin in the game on. We had this moment about a week or so ago where, you know, a couple of weeks ago that it came out that like some anonymous studio executive told a writer at I think it was deadline that their plan was to

that the W.J. is demands were unreasonable and we're just going to kind of wait out until they lose their homes right on the street and then we'll then we can get them to accept it. And you know, this was right around when SAG was deciding to strike and Ron Pearlman gets on and makes a little video where he basically says, we can burn your houses down. Like there's more than one way to lose a house. And I thought the important thing about sharing that because one of the ways media works

is that the things that people are willing to listen to and that can like affect them and change their minds, is partly dependent on the situational context at the time. This is why so many of the journalism have done the far right, like has been articles that I felt like I had to get out within an hour or two of a shooting because people will pay attention to these things

that are problems that are important. They won't, if I do a deep dive on how this specific kind of radicalization works normally, but if somebody's just been shot, they'll listen leak if I do a deep dive on how this specific kind of radicalization works normally. But if somebody's just been shot, they'll listen, you know, and that's like unfortunate, but that's the way people are. And there's this, I thought what I thought was important about that is that not that, you know, Ron Pearlman threatened to burn down a guy's house. That's just kind of funny.

But what he was doing there that's really valuable that I think more people need to think about is accepting that when you're saying really valuable that I think more people need to think about is Accepting that when you're saying something like well, we just need to wait for writers to lose their homes That's a violent threat. That is a threat to harm somebody for your own personal gain And we shouldn't view that as like fundamentally morally different than saying I want to go rob a guy with a 38 right? I don't I don't feel like there's a big moral gap between them. And you can get people to actually kind of, who maybe wouldn't think about that,

to think about that this way. And I think that's an important thing to transmit in this time. Oh man, 100%. Yeah, the fact that what it gives you real context for what they're actually saying when they say, we just got to wait them out till they don't have any more money in like, it really starts to hurt their health and well-being.

Like, yeah. You have somebody else being like, oh, I can hurt your health and well-being. And you're like, okay, I get how those are the same thing, but that's not what I was saying. It was more removed, you see. And so you're obviously right. Like having hellboy come out and be like,

there's lots of ways to lose a house. It's like, oh shit. Yeah, yeah. It's a, it's like, there's lots of ways to lose a house. It's like, oh shit. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, there's like potential right now that I'm glad to see recognized. How are you doing? Like just in general with this,

because it is, you know, we've talked about all the good parts, there's a lot that's good. This is like, this is a stressful time. Like I'm wondering, like, you wake up and like you hear. It's like, it's for acknowledging that. Yeah, that's, it's like, I'm wondering like, you wake up and like you hear. It's for acknowledging that. Yeah, that's, it's like how you, how you be? Uh, it sucks. It sucks real bad.

It sucks particularly badly because I loved my job. Yeah. I, when I talk about all these things, a lot of this wasn't happening at my job. My job was, I had working for an animated show that ran 22 episodes a season that was, it would get, we knew when we were getting our pickups generally, and it was a system that worked and I was really, really enjoying it.

And very happy at my job, I was getting paid well, like I liked everything about it. I felt like it was financially stable and I was getting what I deserved. And I was just happy. And that's not what's happening across like 80% of other shows right now. And so like we left, we left our show in solidarity

of other writers because at some point, this, I maybe won't have this job anymore and I'll have to go get another job. And also for all the people who are working those other jobs and it's really, really struggling right now to even make ends meet. We know they're working on three different shows a year, like they came and pay their rent, like we're working on behalf of them. But more importantly, like we're

striking on behalf of all the other writers who are going to come along after this. Like the fact that the 2008 strike happened was the reason that my show is so good and has such good benefits. And like, why the show is, it is comfortable for writers because they fucking went to work and like they got what they needed from the studios, even though it was hard and it was bitter and a lot of them lost their jobs over it. And so now it's just like, even though it sucks and I'm not happy about it, it's, it's our turn to do it. It's like our turn to make sure that everything works. Yeah, it's such an important detail, but like a lot of the people striking when you, there's

been this kind of like bad faith thing. I've seen some people on the left do it online where like they'll post some video of like an actor, you know, talking about why they're doing the strike about this person's net worth is this many millions of dollars and it's like, well, they're not striking for them. Like run, run, Pearlman is going to be okay. Run Pearlman is not going to be forced out of his home. Like, that's not why they're doing this because I mean, yeah. That you can have a, you can, you can have a good job, but also have a sense of the bigger picture and like a greater,

a greater good. Yeah. You can just like care about the art form, you know, and we're watching journalism get fucking eatin' alive right now and AI is gonna, is, is, has has been a part of like people have already lost their jobs because this shit and like the thing that keeps you in a brought up to me when I'll, I'll talk about it to like family or whatever is like, well, you know, they're using it to replace these low level jobs, you know,

some of sports articles are like, you know, this kind of coverage of that kind of coverage, like it's not the kind of stuff you do. It's not like investigation. You can't have a machine do that. And it's like, we have it. How do you think people learn to do what I do? Part of it is like doing the, that's the fever, right? It's part of what you're saying about like TV writing.

It's like they're trying to kill the way in which people learn how to continue this art for. 100%. Yeah, no, there's so many parallels between this and what's happening with journalism. In terms of like, it's turning it essentially into a gig economy which is exactly what destroyed the news or is destroying the news. But like, yeah, it's it's the same thing and with you talk about AI, like, if you were to write an episode of a show and you have a written by credit on it, you get a script fee for that. And ultimately, like, what the studios want is to just have a piece of

shit AI written script to begin with, and then they're not paying a script fee to anybody, and then writers just fix that. And so like, yeah, it's a, it's all these different like cost saving measures, then ensure that no one will ever come up through this industry again and then all the things. Yeah, there will still be people who become writers, but there'll be people whose parents are rich, and so they can afford to work for free forever. And then, and then you know what we don't get the bear. The bear and it's curiously jacked leading man. Where's, where's it get the time?

When's he putting down the protein? We're not saying him chug a protein shake every 20 minutes. You can play the violin on Twitter and I agree with you. The structure that requires the, like, to get a body like that, the structure you need in your life, and the regiments that you need to follow need to be like, to a tee every single day. And there's just, he's too spontaneous,

there's too much going on in his life. He hasn't had time, he doesn't have two hours to carve out to go to the gym every day. No, this is my only issue. This is what's really threatening my support of the WGA. I just needed an episode of the bear where the all it is is going through his workout routine. He's in the back room. He's doing some curls, you know? Yeah, I just got bags of rice back there. He's doing squats with a lot of

shoulders. I didn't even I want to see him at 3 a.m. in the morning and I'll buy it. I'll be a five at 3 a.m. in the morning and he's like going to any time fitness or fucking whatever. And he's like, look at that a little bit. I can be like, okay, there it is. That's when he's doing it. There we go. That's how it fits it in. Let me see him get his BCAAs, you know? Have fucking Richie be like, you taking your pre-workout today?

Yeah, give me a little bit, you know? All right, soren, you got an out here. Do you have anything you want to plug before like perhaps a podcast with our other former colleague, Dan O'Brien? No, yeah. No, fuck it. Fuck it.

Yeah. Yeah, I got a show called Quick Question with Dan and Soren. No, Soren and Dan, oh, got him a headliner. Yeah, Quick Question with Soren and Daniel, you can check that out anywhere the list of podcasts. It's basically just Dan and I catching up because we live on opposite coasts and we're good buddies.

And that's about it. Yeah, excellent. Check out quick questions with Soren and Dan, special show. Just a wonderful time. Soren, thank you so much. And was it, you know, good luck out there on the picket line to you, to all of the other writers and to everybody at SAG After. Thank you. Go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go his new podcast of 2022, he's back with a closer look at the darkness surrounding mega-church La Luz del Mundo and its leader, Nasson Joaquin Garcia.

They believe that he was Jesus Christ on Earth. It wasn't even so much that he liked sex. He wanted something to pray. It's the largest cult in the world that no one has ever heard of. For three generations, La Luz del Mundo had an incredible control on this community that began in Mexico and then grew across the United States until one day. A day of reckoning for the man whose millions of followers

called him the Apostle. Their leader was arrested and survivors began to speak out about the sexual abuse, the murder and corruption. This is just a business, and their product are people. They want to know that they will kill you. Listen to all episodes now on the I Heart Ready Up, Apple Podcasts, or whatever you get your podcasts.

911, what's your emergency? You shot her! Oh my God! It's a nightmare we could never have imagined. And a killer who is still on the loose. My small town rocked by murder. There are certain murders I'm scared to discuss. In the 1980s, we're in high school losing friends, teachers, and community members.

One after another, after another, for a decade. We weren't safe anywhere. We're teenagers terrified to leave our own homes. Would we be next? Who is killing all the kids? And why? In that moment, I saw rage. And why do you some want the town secrets

to stay dead and buried forever? I'm not sure why you're digging up all this old stuff again, but I'd be careful. Don't say I didn't warn you, Nancy. Listen to the murder years on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, what's up y'all? This is Eric Andreik, but I made a podcast called Bomming about absolutely tanking on stage. I'm talking about your most invisible experiences of the performer.

I tell gnarly stories and I talk to friends about their worst moments of bombing in all sorts of ways. Bombing on stage, bombing in public, bombing in life. Like the time I stole a girl's phone during a set and she dumped on stage and threw a big A-maker punch to my nose. I want to know what's the worst way they ever bombed or performed way too drunk or high. There was a time where they thought they were going to crush and they stunk it up.

Subscribe to my podcast, Bombing with Eric Andre to hear more crazy stories from me and my friends. I'll have guests like Sam Jay, Thulsae Sloan, Michelle Butteau, Max DeMarco, DJ Doug Pound, Saturday Night Live, Sarah Sherman, and more! Listen to bombing with Aircon Dre and Will Ferrell's big money players network on the I-HAR radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Mia from the very, very near future. We found out, as we were live recording this episode, that Teamsters Leadership has a tenentive agreement with UPS to try to revert the strike. So we've we've decided to leave this in and you're gonna hear us find this shit out literally in the middle of an interview of what we thought was going to be a really really really large strike starting. So enjoy.

So enjoy. It strikes season here at Ike Dappen here. The podcast where things fall apart and sometimes you put them back together again. And as you probably have noticed, presumably from the last interview, maybe from reading the news, maybe from like talking to people who are in unions, we are in a genuinely historic period of laborbilitancy in this country that is effectively, we are now entering the second phase of the hot summer of 2023. We used to have hot summers all the time and people do what that meant, and now it just means like global warming. But long ago in the galaxy far, far away, there are things called hot

summers when everyone would fucking go on strike. And there'd be, you know, sort of masters as a capital estate. And yeah, we're fucking going back there. And to talk with me about the next series of massive private sector strikes that we're about to get is resmith and all of our rows who are rank and file UPS workers and teamsters doing the standard disclaimer. These individuals do not represent the union or positions of the union they are speaking as individuals. Yeah, we have this is this is this is this is the disclaimer for the lawyers. It is also true. Yeah, but recent Oliver, welcome to the show. Hey, yeah, thanks for having us. Yeah, thank you much. Yeah, I'm really, really glad we can talk to you.

So, all right, the day this is going out, it'll be six days before the teamsters are potentially going to go on strike and the current contract runs out. Can I, yeah, can we talk a little bit about what, okay, who is going on strike and what do they do? Yeah, so there's going to be 340,000 UPS workers going on strike and that's going to be, you know, the inside warehouse workers and that's going to be the delivery drivers. And also the feeder drivers and the 224s like all of them. And what do you think is the best to work? Yes, yes.

So 224s is a classification of worker where they're kind of half inside and half driving. Something that the union has told us is that there's already been a tentative agreement that that classification is not going to exist anymore. It was kind of a really raw deal for people that found themselves in that position. Shit, what was the other one that I mentioned?

22, four-hour drivers, I think? Feater drivers, yes. So, feater drivers are not your regular package delivery drivers. They drive the big semis that you see from like hub to hub and whatnot, and that's how they deliver. So, those are the last two classifications that I mentioned. And yeah, we're all going to be going on strike.

And, well, we are potentially going to be on strike. And if we are, UPS is kind of going to be in a world of hurt because it is very hard to replace 340 thousand workers. And what economists have told me is a tight labor market. So yeah, it's going to be very exciting. Yeah, I'm excited. I don't know. It was funny.

So when SAG officially walked off and joined the WGA strike, that was the largest strike since hilariously, the team shows one on strike. The year I was born, it was like 97. And hilariously, that is a title that if this happens, they're going to hold that title for like one month before this UPS strike replaces it as a large strike in the US since the 90s. Yeah, yeah, it's gonna be wild. If we go on strike, while, you know,

Sagafra is on strike and while the writers gilder are on strike, that's gonna be over half of million workers on strike in this country at this time. And that is just going to be, you know, it's going to be fucking historic, right? Yeah. And there's a chance, depending on how long these strikes drag out, that we get to like September, the big three auto, the UAW goes on strike. And if that happens, that that will be like the most number of people who have been on strike in this country since like the 50s, which is wild, especially, you know,

because this is supposed to be a sort of like, I don't know, I think the sort of especially interesting thing about this right is that actual union density is really low and hasn't been increasing that much. On the other hand, like everyone seems to like unions and everyone wants to go on strike. And I don't know, it's a really interesting sort of set of conditions right now. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I, I, I'm very heartened by, you know, the, the support that unions have garnered. Because as you mentioned, you know, we are at a low union density. There was like that labor decline that happened, you know, since the fucking like 70s and 80s, right?

Like the backlash to organized labor. to climb that happened since the fucking 70s and 80s, right? Like the backlash to organized labor. I am very hopeful that this strike wave can kind of turn that around. Something that I've been thinking about a lot is, you know, it's like UPS is a major company in a whole logistics sector, right? And like we can set that standard for that logistics company or like a pieceshit company like Amazon can. So if we win and we win big,

that could absolutely encourage more organizing in those other sectors leading to an increase of union density. So hopefully that's like the way forward past all these strikes. It'd be great. It's sorely needed, sorely needed. Absolutely. And even beyond the logistics industry, I think we can show that any company or corporation that, you know, year after year is making these record-breaking profits, you know, while meanwhile, there's poor-work conditions or even unsafe work conditions, you know, there's pay that does not,

you know, allow, you know, us to pay rent, but food on the table, you know, that we can just show that, okay, you know, we're done, you know, with giving all the table, that we can just show that, okay, we're done with giving all of the wealth that we're creating to the company, and now it's going back into our hands. Yeah, and UPS fucking created $13 billion in profits last year. Yeah, and that's up from, I was just reading an article this morning in in Jacobin written by a fellow UPS teamster and that's up from 6.5 billion in 2019. And they're also giving double the profit, over double the profits in like three four years.

They doubled their profits and they keep trying to tell the union that, oh no, I'm just a poor popper. We don't have money for your demands. We're just so poor. And it's like, they're meanwhile, they're given their fucking CEO and shareholders, like dividends and stock buybacks and all of that. In addition to the profits that they are reaping, right?

Because profits are just the cream of the crop, right? Like that's everything past business expenses, what they're paying out, like salary. So that's not even being touched. And yeah, no, it's time for us to say we want that. We created that. So I think that leads into sort of the next thing I want to ask about, which is, can you talk a little bit about what the sort of specific grievances were that kicked that kicked this off? I'm assuming there are a lot because, you know, there is a wide range of conditions because, you know, for a long time, you know,

the contract hasn't kept up with both like economic and non-economic side of things. You know, and we have kind of two have two dynamics where there's, well over a majority of part-time workers who aren't getting enough pay or hours to afford to live. And then we also have the full-time workers who inside warehouse could be working, 10, 12 hour shifts. We have drivers who are doing 12 hour shifts.

And even up to 14 hours every day, and then also getting contacted to come in on their day off. I happen to do six day weeks. Of course, on the driver's side, we have these escalating temperatures, and meanwhile there's no air condition, airs in the vehicles and Same you know thing in the warehouse

Because personally, you know, I work inside warehouse as a loader. So I'm spend you know virtually at home My shift in a trailer loading boxes You know, there's no air flow those things, you know can you know be five to ten degrees hotter You know like at a minimum than the ambient temperature. Last summer, like on a mid 90 day, I recorded 108 degrees, you know, inside the trailer. So, you know, there's not necessarily any kind of protections currently for that. So, you know, that's one big lack in the contract is having those kind of, you know, heat protection and, you know, performance. Yeah, and that can...

Yeah, I mean, that could just kill people. And we've talked about in the show before people have died, like, working conditions like that because, you know, it was too hot, but their bosses were like, fuck you, we don't care, like, keep unloading the stuff. Yeah, and it's absolutely tragic. I know we had a, you know, UPS teamster, I believe in California, who died due to the extreme heat conditions last summer. And also know, you know, there was another case where I think a driver stopped at like a convenience store to buy a drink and

you know, was fired. We're making, you know, off-road stop. Even though they tell us, you know, take breaks when you need it, but they don't actually mean that. Yeah. Yeah. Because obviously, you know, you wouldn't be being disciplined or fired. One of the things that I saw was part of the negotiations that UPS had offered to be like, oh, we'll put in air conditioning in all new vehicles. And I was looking at this and I was like, this is, this is the Clean air act loophole. I remember this. If you only specify new vehicles, I'll just

never replace the old ones. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, with these companies, they're going to be looking for those loopholes, right? Yeah. And like, I don't know that I've seen a vehicle that looked new seen a vehicle that looked new when I'm at my hub, I'm also an inside worker. And yeah, they all look like they've been around been around a while. And I don't know that they've been spending the capital to get those new vehicles. So that's absolutely something that we're going to, you know, keep their feet to the fire on, so to speak. Yeah, and then in terms of other conditions that are like really leading up to this,

right now there is a big problem with MRAs and no, not the MRAs you all might be thinking of. This is a market rate adjustment. And both are bad. Both are bad. We are staunchly against both MRAs. And essentially what an MRA does is it sounds good at first. You know, it gives the company leeway to, you know, potentially increase our pay, right? Beyond what's just stipulated in the contract. However, when you kind of get late into the contract like, you know, towards the expiration date,

the base pay that was agreed on for the last contract is no longer acceptable. And while it gives them the leeway to increase our wage, they can always go back down to the lower wage. Should they choose to. And last year at the hub that I worked at, it was right after peak, in peak season, we were hired on at $27 an hour and come February. We're all walking into the job. And there's one of the supervisors there who is frankly looking like she's not having a good time,

having to stop to talk to each of us to explain, oh yeah, so we are gonna be bringing your pay down to 15, 50 an hour. Jesus. But don't, I know, I know, but don't worry, don't worry. There's an attendance bonus. There's an attendance bonus of $120 if you make all your shifts. And that really fucking sucked.

Like if you get sick, like, okay, so like at this hub that I work at, I work at one of the few hubs that don't have what's called the hourly guarantee. Most hubs have an hourly guarantee. If you're a part-time worker, you have an hourly guarantee of three and a half hours a day. So if they say that there's no work to be done, you can say, I want that hourly guarantee and they either find you more work to do

or they pay that out. And then for full-time workers, that's eight hours. I work at one of the few hubs that doesn't. It's a classification related to the type of hub that I am at. And so I'm only like, at this hub, I work maybe 12 hours a week if I'm lucky. So this is 12 hours a week at 15, 15 hour with an attendance bonus. But if I get sick one of those days, that means I have a paycheck, a weekly paycheck

that is going from roughly $200 to like maybe roughly 80. And that is just, it's totally, totally unacceptable. The way that they could go on. Like, yeah, with the flag going on, yes. Being sick is highly likely right now. And yeah, no, they're just kind of able to like yo-yo us around on these wages, like whenever they want. And so a demand that is being circulated in the grassroots of the union, leadership hasn't really talked about it to my knowledge, but there is a, you know,

a petition going around to have a starting wage of $25 an hour. And right now, because right now this year, I'm making $24 and they didn't do that bullshit, I think kind of an anticipation of the strike coming, they didn't want to make us more angry. And so that would only be a dollar increase for me, but also it would prevent them from doing that in the future, right? Yeah. So. Yeah.

And I like Reese, you know, also was affected by the MRA, but luckily not as severe, you know, my pay went from 26 down to 23 an hour. And of course, you know, what, 10, 11% pay cut, also, same time inflation goes up, you know, 10%. Yeah, that was a lot of work. So, you know, this is a difficult and enough let alone having, you know, you're paying it and dropped almost by 50%. Yeah.

You know, there's multiple hubs in the area and they're all just on different pay scales, you know, for the same kind of, you know, same, same area, doing the same work. And we had this have these like fluctuating pay scales. You know, I know for us it was right after peak season. And they're like, oh, thanks so much for the most successful peak season ever. We made record-breaking profits. We couldn't have done this without you.

By the way, we're cutting all of your pay. And now of course, we're getting paid above 25 and hey, that helped their profits. So, you know, it's absolutely absurd to say, oh, well, you know, we can't afford, you know, these higher wages when they can't. They don't do profits. They don't do it.

Yeah, exactly. They don't do their fucking profits. Like, are you kidding me? Like, Jesus Christ, it's like they think we're fucking dumb. It's like, no, like our work bar exceeded what you're paying us. Like an unimaginable amount. Yeah. And you guys, like it was earlier on,

and the couple not earlier on, I think this happened maybe late June, early July, it was, they leaked, it got leaked their economic proposals for us. And they had the part-timers starting at $17 an hour, $17. And like, I just, I don't think that's affordable anywhere. That's the thing I'm going gonna mention that I think is, I think it's really important, but isn't particularly well-known.

So, if you go back to the original 515 campaign, right? $15 million, you know, wage. Like that wage, which was already kind of nonsense in like 2012, with inflation, that's like 1930 now. Yeah. So, this is how much inflation has sort of deteriorated wages. And that's just sort of like economic terms. Like inflation is like the bundle of goods, right? And that's not accounting for the fact that for example, the increasing housing prices

has been way higher from this sort of like, average rating inflation, right? Health costs are increasing higher from the sort of quote unquote, average rate inflation. And so like, yeah, it's like, yeah, there's something like a lot of money. It's fucking not like, no, it's simply is not. Yeah, I heard at a rally not too long ago from one of the speakers for, you know, it was a, it was a team's rally that, you know, we're getting our members hyped and all that. And one of the speakers mentioned that for our city, a minimum wage that could be livable would be $26 an hour. And I'm

just like, yeah, that seems about right. And that's like the bare minimum. That's like, okay, I can eat enough. I can pay my rent. And I probably don't have a whole lot left over. So. Yeah, especially when we have, you know, like average rent, you know, for one bedroom, you know, what, we're on like $1,500, you know, these days and so many landlords want, you know, want three times, you know, that rent and income. So, you know, it's actually just kind of,

yeah, writing, you know, or, you know, doing the math last night. I was just like, oh, okay, so in my hours, I would actually need $43 an hour. Just to be making three times the average monthly rent. So that's definitely why, you know, $25 an hour is the minimum that I think we can settle for. I would love to see it higher, but I also recognize, you know, well, you know, maybe 25 is still not quite cutting it in a more urban area, but there's going to be a lot of people, that's

significant gains that are going to help so much to meet their material needs. Definitely, I have to consider this as big picture. This is a national agreement. We got to get that really solid foundation, and then we can expand from there. Yeah. Well, what the... Sorry.

As you were talking, I got a thing saying that the teamsters have settled. What? All right. Think. Oh my gosh. What the fuck? Oh, you were there back up the table.

Back at the negotiation table. Oh, Jesus Christ. They've only been at the negotiation table for like four hours. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Well, I got a check signal. Shads here.

Yeah. Jesus Christ. Well, I don't know if we're going to leave this in, but yeah, we've discovered live on air at that. Yeah. Teamsters win historic UPS contract. Oh, boy. Oh, boy.

See? Yeah. I'm also looking at this and see one of the. Yeah, I'm up the teamster.org website where they have an update on it. Yeah, and at least, you know, speaking of wages, at least the first thing that I'm seeing is a existing part timers will be raised up to no less than $21 per hour immediately. Part-time seniority workers earning more under a market rate adjustment

would still receive all new general wage increases. Yeah, yeah, this is, I'm not stoked on those wages. Yeah. Yeah, no, I'm definitely, I am 25 or bust on this. Yeah. All right, so that does, that will change things, that definitely changes the timeline, because this still has to be sent out to be voted on and approved by membership. And what we learned at the, there was a call not too long ago where they kind of explained

the process of it. So in the event that they would reach its head to div agreement, that gets sent out to us, we vote from home. And it takes about three weeks for it to ratify. There is still a possibility that membership could vote to reject it, in which case they would be going back to the bargaining table. And we could potentially be going on strike then. But this does set it back by now three weeks. It'll be interesting to see what the TDU, which is the team serves for a Democratic Union, which is a reform caucus inside our, our union, it'll be interesting to see what their line is on this. Um, so, oh my gosh.

What a, what a bomb draw to get in the middle of a podcast. Yeah. to get in the middle of a podcast. Yeah. Yeah, but unfortunately, I can't even speak to it. Since came to a little bit of it. Yeah, yeah. Do they actually have the full agreement out or are they just, do they just have like this stuff? They will not have the full agreement out.

Something that we've been having a little bit of frustrations with within our union is that we do not have open bargaining. So bargaining happens. Yeah, bargaining happens behind closed doors. Jesus Christ. And they occasionally give us updates about what's happening, but we don't really get to see the full picture until we're going to be voting on it. And I obviously think this is bad for a number of reasons. One, and a big primary one is these contracts that are negotiated. I was about to go get my copy

of the contract, so I could show you. And then I remember this is a podcast and that's not actually going to be helpful for. Hey, we do we do we do we do we do visual bits on this podcast all the time. It's fine. So the size of our park our contract is about the size of a pocket Bible. Jesus. It is it is very, very big. And it's you in that legalism stuff like that. And so it's not very accessible to most of our members. And so if we had open and bargaining, if we had consistent

like updates where our union leadership would be like, all right, so this is what we've agreed upon so far, this is what we've rejected, this is what it all means. You know, in the lead up to like whether or not you vote, no, membership could have a far more comprehensive understanding of what is in the contract instead of waiting until the very end as we got little bits, pieces, and snippets,

and then being like, okay, well, read this and decide how you feel. Yeah, I mean, that's, I don't know, if it feels like a system that's just sort of designed to like railroad people into signing whatever contract and go shaders agree to, which is kind of a disaster. And without that transparency, I mean, you know, you know, all of us rank and file members are, you know, essentially being removed

from the process, you know, being involved in the decision making, you know, stipulating what's going to do it, you know, to meet our needs. What do we need out of these five-year contracts? I think it was just a few days ago, get a update from the local, basically a week before the contract ends. You know, talking about this is one of the most transparent contracts. There's ever been, there's all these updates, and there's more rank and file. Members involved in the bargaining. It's like, well, that's great. That shows how far we've come, I guess, but also it's sad to think that this process that's

all banned by an NDA is the most transparent. It's been. And it also the fact, the fact that you're fighting this out live on air from like their press release that they put out on Twitter, it's like, what? Yeah. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Absolutely, absolutely absurd. Yeah.

So it seems like this is a, this is an agreement that is going to be pushed by union leadership as a vote to vote yes on, which is a kind of a far cry from earlier in July when the teamsters were telling UPS, you need to present us with either an agreement that we actually agree with or present your last best final offer by July 5th, right? Yeah. And yeah, yeah. So, yeah, we'll see how the Ranking Vile react in the 2018 contract. I know that the TDU tried to organize a vote no campaign. And they did get a simple majority of the membership to vote no. However, at the time, and this has now been changed, but at the time, in our Constitution,

it would require a two-thirds majority to have rejected it and go on strike. Oh, Jesus Christ. Was that because it was because it has one of those weird like electoral college systems, or was it like you need two-thirds project a conference? It was a, you need two thirds. That has been changed when Sean, when the reform slate was elected and they had their teamsters convention, they changed the constitution so that it would be a simple majority. So yeah, we'll see the line that TD you wants to take.

Yeah, we'll see. This certainly puts a wrinkle in things. I'm going to be honest, I was actually really looking forward to strike pay because my strike pay would have paid more than my actual job jobs. Yeah, I mean, I think there's like, I mean, I think there's a few things that we can sort of immediately talk about from this. One is that it doesn't, like nothing they've put out here

from what I've read so far, I'm reading, I mean, literally I'm reading from the teamsters website says you're doing anything about market rate adjustments at all. Mm-hmm. And the second thing is that, you know, you know, we were talking earlier before we knew that there was a strike about sort of the impact of this on the entire class. And it really looks like both the teamsters and UPS, like, you know, really wanted to cut a deal as, you know, part of this attempt to keep everything going and to keep the

stuff from happening, which I mean which I think makes sense, right? If you're UPS, you don't act like, we're having an actual sort of like, workers in servicing, like having a summer this hot isn't good for, like it isn't good for UPS, it's arguably not good for some of the more sort of, like from the more sort of conservative union leaderships either who do who unlike a lot of workers do not want to be on strike

because that like that cut that cuts into the sort of war chest of capital that they have to manage. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. They're just recently on Twitter or excuse me, X, it's X now, but just recently on Twitter, there was a fair amount of a strike discourse. And there was like, you know, labor activists and stuff saying that, you know, like it's good. It's good for, you know, if they reach a tentative agreement that, you know, yeah, yeah,

that if they reach a tentative agreement that, you know, yeah, yeah, that if they reach a tentative agreement that, you know, makes those material gains, it's better to not go on strike. And like, I know, I know, like, and to me, that's like a little bit wild because one, there is so much and we could demand so much more. But also like, you know, collective action, you know, in order to be consistent, to be good at it, it requires you to undertake it. When I think about how our local is, they have a very service model orientation to unionism as opposed to an organizing model. And I was really under the impression that this potential strike

could have kind of lit a fire under their ass and kind of got back into the organizing aspect of unionism. And they weren't that great at that. I swear sometimes we would talk to them about like, hey, so like have you tried like mobilizing members? Have you tried like showing up at the gates? Have you like, you know, you can like, there's like programs out there

where you can text your entire membership about like, you know, come to this like contract update and it's like we were just speaking a different language. Like they just had no idea. Like they had no idea. And they would look at our union meetings where like, you know, we represent like I think over, like, like I think well over like a thousand workers. I don't have the numbers on that,

so I'm not gonna get more specific. But like well over that. And they would look at our union meetings where we have maybe 50 to 70 people and they're just kind of like, well, this is just as good as it's going to get. Yeah. And that's nonsense. Like, it's nonsense. It's nonsense. Like, you know, like back in the fucking like, you know, from like the tens to the 50s, union meetings would bring in just so many people and they don't have anywhere near the like technological advanced advantages that we have now.

And it was just, it's very much like, yes, you tell us about your grievances, we get those filed, and we do make those like wins for you. And like that's good. Like, you know, there are some unions that barely do that much. And the fact that they do that is great. But like, you know, at my hub, I remember I was, I was talking to my carpool. And he didn't even know who his steward was. And I'm like the only person that gives him updates about what's going on in the union. And that's

just because like when I started working at UPS, I was just like, yeah, I'm going to go to these fucking union meetings. I'm going gonna find out what's going on. I want to be involved. And most people, you know, it's just a job for them. And they don't know all the things that a union can provide for them, or how a union can back them up. And part of that's because, you know, union leadership, you know, has decided that that's not something,

they don't need to be as engaged with the members as they could be. Yeah. Well, and there's a second thing there too, which is like, okay, if you are like, if you are someone, if you were in a position of leadership and you're in your position of leadership because there's a credit, there's like really, really low attendance for union elections, right? A really low turnout, which is usually true, right? Like union election turnout

just tends to be just atrocious. You don't actually want more people being involved? Because the more people they're involved, the more likely it is that much people are going to show up for the election. And someone's gonna look at one of the deals you've got and it's gonna be like, what the fuck are you doing? Right?

So there's a lot of sort of perverse and sensitive structures in terms of just sort of the basic organizational electoral structure that gets you, you know, like people cutting deals and calling and, you know, like trying to cut off the sort of hot summer at its knees. Yeah, I have a lot of something funny that's kind of related to that. So when we were voting to authorize a voting to authorize a strike, right? You know, we did it and all of that. And Sean O'Brien announced that there was going to be voting at the gates and our local initially was like, oh no,

we're just going to have people come to the hall between the hours of eight and 10 on two specific days, and we'll do voting that way. Eventually, they did change it after they got pressure, I think, probably from up top and below. But one of the members who is involved was like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no if it's just the people that are motivated enough to go because they're the ones that are gonna vote the thing on through. And that was wild to seeing that sort of perspective. Because if the union is there, if our union reps, our business agents,

if they're there, if they're constantly engaging membership, then we will all be on the same page. They're the ones that have all of the, like, you know, the, like, technical information. They're the ones that can really talk to, they can talk to people about, you know, like, this is how much UPS is making in profits. This is like what they're paying our CEO. This is all of this. You deserve more and we're going to fight for it.

And if they had those constant interactions, we would all be on the same page and we wouldn't have to worry about, well, if there's increased voter turnout, it might make the vote kinda iffy. You know, like... Yeah, there's definitely, you know, that's been one of my biggest gripes is around, you know, communications,

particularly, you know, from the local, which is kind of practically non-existent. And you know, there's so many, even between new hires and even people who have been there a few years at part-time, are like, don't know the rights under our contract. And it was only because of organizing and talking with people that I know those rights and can then share that knowledge with other teamsters. But it's kind of like, well, why are we having to do this? And I mean, of course, internal organizing, knowledge is super important.

But it'd be nice, why isn't there a welcome packet? Why are there not more, maybe not like full meetings, but at least something where, you know, our union officials can meet with rank and file members. And I think I partly, you know, speaking to that because, you know, the shift I work is during union meetings. So, you know, attending those is not quite feasible for me or other people on my shift. And I know that's also kind of seems like it's led

to this some contempt for part-timers, like, oh, we're not involved. You know, we don't care, but it's like, we don't necessarily know about the meetings or that there's the scheduling conflict or you know again talking about like we don't even know what our, you know, it. Like, come on. This is absurd. Self-fulfilling prophecy there. Yeah. You're creating the outcome that you think already exists because you're not engaging members. So there was another thing that I wanted to talk about, which is that there's been a lot of like, I don't know, I've been seeing this in sort of various places in the

discourse talking about the strike, which is that. There's a lot of people who basically are holding on to the notion that A, people don't want to strike and B, that striking is bad and that you should want to do it as little as possible. And this pisses me off for a lot of reasons. One of which is that my grandma was a teamster. And she was a union punch card operator like back in like the

70s and 80s. Um, and you know, my grandma is like, like not like a leftist, right? Like she we have to stop her from giving money to the fallen gong. Like she's so you know, this is the kind of super killing with you, right? But like she loved going on strike, right? Like, and that's the thing that like my family who's not like particularly sort of labor friendly or like, oh yeah, no, we love going on strike because that's what she has insurance, right? It's because the team's here to go on,

like in the 80s, seems just we go on strike. And I think that's never thing that's like this, you know, this kind of, well, okay, there's two ways to look at it. One is that it's a fundamental misreading of the situation that's happening right now, which is, no, people absolutely love going on strike. People are really excited to go on strike.

People whose politics are not like, people whose politics are not aligned with the left, really like going on strike and are really excited about it. And this is something that's happening sort of irrespective of, there's been a bunch of wild catch strikes. This is something that's been happening sort of irrespective of like actual union membership as people want to do this. We've also seen sort of therespective of, there's been a bunch of wild catch strikes. This is something that's been happening sort of irrespective of like actual, you didn't membership as people want to do this.

We've also seen sort of the great resignation over the last few years of, you know, what is effectively a massive, like part of the reason the conditions for labor are like this strong right now is because there's been this massive, informal strike of people just sort of people, you know, walking off the job, like deciding their job, fucking sucks and quitting. And that's been putting a lot of pressure on employers. And some of the things that I think the reading of this that's more cynical is that these people know this, right?

They know that people want to go on strike, and they're looking at it and they're terrified. And their conclusion is we have to fucking stop. We have to stop the way of labor militancy before it gets going because if it gets going, you know, if you're like, if you're, you know, like a sort of centrist of liberal politician or if you're like a conservative union bureaucrat, like that's terrifying for you. Then there's, you know, there's, there's a lot of people who have a lot to lose. If, if, if, you know, like an, if, if I'm really sort of a president wave of labor mill to see gets going. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Uh, you know, when I think of, uh, you know, people in wanting to go on strike, uh, I guess I'll touch on two things here, which is that, you know, at my hub, whenever we talk about going on strike, there, you know, there is a sense that, yes, people really want it. And also, they're really worried that they aren't going to be able to, that we're gonna get this 10 of agreement that most people will want.

And it's not gonna happen. And we've had all of this build up. And it's kinda fall flat. And then also, I've spent a fair amount of time on picket lines as a community supporter. And there is something incredibly magical about being on strike. There's often just this outpouring

of community support for the workers, right? And workers get to see that their labor is extremely valued by the larger community. And I think that is really important. I think that builds bonds of solidarity. And you get to see the other unions who come out in support of your strike, and then you go and support them.

And then it creates, yeah, it creates these bonds that aren't really, they can be achieved without it, but it's just so much more bonding. I guess I'm gonna use the term bonds a lot, but and there really isn't a substitute for it. And then people also, they get to experience the power that they have as labor, right? Like they realize it's like, oh, wait, no.

Like I'm on strike and this company is like, the shit is hitting the fan for them because they don't have us who know how to do our jobs in their doing them. Right? Like, you know, I was at a picket line for this other company a few years back. And like, the workers there on the line were constantly giving the updates. They'd be like, yeah, man, it's wild. I heard in there that like, in there that the managers are trying to do our jobs and none of what they make is edible

and they're throwing it all away. And like, the machines are breaking. Like, and so they're one, they're seeing that, yes, their labor is specific, it has value, it is necessary and crucial. And they are getting that community support. And there's not a lot of other opportunities for those realizations to happen.

So. Yeah, and I mean, this is something that, I've literally seen this, our teachers union, I mean, talk about this a bit on the show, but our local teachers union in Chicago, like, they got a reform caucus and they're not perfect, but they're local teachers union Chicago, like got, you know, they got a reform caucus and they're not perfect, but you know, they're much better than what was happening before. And, you know, and one of the things they do is they've been on strike

a lot of times in the last about decade, decade, decade, bit over a decade. And it changed the city. Like Chicago is a, you know, was for, I mean, decades, decades, decades, this just like, intermitable machine run, like neoliberal hellhole. And you know, I mean, I'm not going to say like Chicago's like some kind of like, you know, like beacon of the left or whatever, but like the city is just different after it. And it wasn't just the one I tried, they kept, they kept going on track and they kept going on track. And you know, you can, you can look at the quality of their wins and you can sort of like, you know, like, I mean, there's that, like, I know, I mean, like, I know people who like have quibbles with sort of like exactly what happened in the contract negotiations, but like, you know, they, they went on strike multiple times and they won. And that really,

and, and then, you know, and the other thing that happened is the thing you were talking about, right? It's like, suddenly you're at these pickets and like the entire community is showing up, like everyone's showing up with food, like it, it, it showing up with food, like it changed the city. And, you know, and I think this guy says another thing I think is important here about, and what's, you know, sort of the potential is being averted is the interesting thing about this strike wave is that we've had a number, you know, we've had like the whole, we had sort of the Wildcat teacher strikes in 2017, we've had a couple of ways of teacher strikes, but most of the strikes that have been happening are public sector unions.

We haven't had these giant strikes other than basically, there's been some, right? There's been a lot of strikes in the healthcare sector. We haven't had a strike like at this scale in the private sector, in outside basically, like the teamsters and like the guild, are like the only two big unions on that scale who go on strike like even kind of regularly, even that's like a once in like 20 year thing, right?

And so, I don't know, like I think I think just sort of the potential of what's being lost here is enormous. If what happens is that this deal, which is like, I don't not create what I see in the initial things, although again, like we still don't fucking know what's in this deal. And we're not going to for like a bit at like at least until they fucking release the thing. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, obviously, you know, we'll we'll have to see, you know, what's what's in that agreement. Yeah. You know, at least just, you know, for, you know, we'll have to see, you know, what's in that agreement. Yeah. You know, at least just,

you know, for, you know, my own views, you know, it's any, you know, company, you know, that's paying you poverty wages or, you know, there's unsafe work conditions. And just seems like, well, on principle, there needs to be a work stoppage. Like that's, you know, if you're going to treat people that way, that's just the result. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Something that I'm like kind of thinking about right now is like, so like the 21.75, I believe it is, for part-time workers, you know, that is a significant increase from the 1550, but we're just at the beginning of our five-year contract.

Yeah, yeah. 1550, but we're just at the beginning of our five-year contract. Yeah. You know, like, I feel like, you know, like it's being viewed as like, oh, well, that's like, okay, for right now. It's, you know, kind of not. But it's really just not going to be okay in five years when we have to have these contract negotiations again. And because we're not starting out with a solid $25 an hour, we're gonna be playing catch up

to what is not really okay right now. Like, it's just gonna, like, it's like, it's just gonna keep happening, you know? By the time we get to 20, 28, you know, we'll probably get up to $25 an hour maybe, but by that time, who knows what we're actually going to need in order to survive in this economy. So I feel like that wage is just not proactive enough for what we're going to need in the coming years. And, you know, in there there is stuff about like, you know, wage increases for like, you know, however long you've been there and stuff like that.

But yeah, I, you know, you know, like I graduated from high school in like 2008 and I just feel like my entire life, the economy has just been fucking shitty. And when they tell me the economy is great, my finances are still fucking shitty. And, you know, like, this is the, one of the old 2011 slogans that like,

well, I guess this also, it doesn't hate slogan that like people need to fucking remember is that the, when the bank takes your house GDP goes up. Right. The economic indicators that we have are, you know, they're, they're Bushwack economic indicators, right? Like they are, they are, they are designed to measure how well capital is being

extracted from you. Mm-hmm. Yup. Yep, yep, yep. It definitely no reflection on our actual day to day lives. You know what, what our needs are. Yeah, and hey, some people made money off of your labor. So things are good.

Unless you know, you're the laborer. Yeah. And like, you know, I think I think everything that like happens a lot is like, yeah, like, you yeah, it is entirely possible that a bunch of people who are making like $70,000 a year are fucking doing great right now. And it's like, what, bully for them? Like, who are fucking not?

What's up? Yeah? Yeah. Yeah, and speaking to, to the, you know, what does things look five years out, which seems like things just kind of get exponentially worse. I don't know what the environment, what our climate's gonna be.

I don't know what inflation or food costs, it's gonna be. And so if I need to see what the 10 of agreement has on that market-rich adjustment, and then there's also the cost of living adjustment too, which at least what I believe is, you know, it doesn't kick into like, you've been there for five years, I guess you just aren't living for those first five years.

I don't know. It's great that I, you know, that my utilities and my rent waves my bills for the first five years that I work for UPS. Someone, someone, someone, someone, someone, someone, someone also like go find the statistics on how many people get fired at four years and 11 months. Like, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, that's also when the, the pension, minimum investment, investment time is five years. You know, that's also something I thought about, well, what happens on a four years and 11 months? Is that when, you know, now we've got a bigger target on my back? It's like already a thorn in their side. They, they, they, they did the thing I said they were going to do where it says, UPS will equip in KBC and all large to V delivery vehicles,

sprinter vans and package cars purchased after January 1, when 24 fans are getting cars getting two fans in an induction vent in the cargo compartment, which is good, but also not air conditioning. It's not air conditioning, and it gets very hot in those trailers. And yeah, no, it's like, yeah, in all except, you know, all things purchased after January 1, 2024. Yeah. So it's just like, you know, they'll, yeah, it's like they will start purchasing cars again in like 2094. Yeah. Yeah.

Nothing in there about retrofitting those cars. Well, I think I think they're, well, okay, I don't know. This is another thing like it's unclear to be exactly what a lot of this means because we, you know, like we, we me exactly what a lot of this means because we, we can't get the actual contract. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So this is, we need to, I guess also like, preface this, like, we're not doing legal analysis of this. This is our speculation based on what we're reading. This is none of this. This is our speculation based on what we're reading. This is this none of this constant he's binding legal advice. Yeah, but I don't know. Yeah, yeah, I just work here. Yeah, another thing that I'm like noticing in this contract. So another big grievance that was had was the lack of full-time positions. If you want to get a full-time inside job, there is a seven to 10-year wait list for that.

This tenet of agreement stipulates that there will be a creation of 7,500 new full-time teamster jobs at UPS and the fulfillment of 22,500 open positions. But it doesn't specify if that's going to be for inside work or for, you know, more drivers. And, you know, I have epilepsy, so I am not going to be a driver. That's just, doesn't seem ideal for me. Yeah, I would like to see some numbers on, so that wait list, is that going down? Because that's like what I'm waiting for is to be able to, you know, snag one of those full time inside positions.

But I don't know. And like when you think about, you know, 7,500 full time positions, it's also worth to keep in mind that UPS employees 340,000 people. So it's like, Yeah, wait, yeah, so that's a 2%. Yeah, it's like, yeah, so that's a two percent. Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's like two percent.

And like, admittedly, like, you know, 40% of that workforce is already like their full-time drivers. But so that's like 60% of that is part-timers. And you know, I'm not going to make anyone do more math, but 7,500 for 60% of 340,000 people is not as exciting as just seeing that number by itself. Yeah. Yeah. Which is like a joke.

Like, and this goes into something, you noticed with coworkers, which is always time about, we need more hours. And that is true to a degree. Really though, it's like, well, we need more pay. I think that would be a sign, it could be a really strong union, is that we can even just say, yeah, you know, would be a sign, you know, it can be, you know, like a really strong union is that, you know, we can even just say, yeah, you know what, maybe people shouldn't be working 70 hour weeks. Yeah. You know, maybe we should cap that at 30 with, you know, PTP, that, you know, pays like full time. But of course, you know, we're not there, you know, we need these jobs that can actually provide, you know, definitely not going to knock that, but we definitely like to see that overall shift in our culture of, we don't need to work

more to have our needs met. I think it's also important to understand about UPS jobs. It's like you're fucking destroying your body're, if you're one of the people sorting packages, like, you are lifting, like, you were lifting like thousands of packages a day, these things can weigh up to like 80 fucking pounds. They can weigh up to 150. Oh, 150 Jesus Christ. Never mind. Okay. One 50's the other limit. 70 pounds is where you got a team. You can do team lift. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I talked into a feeder driver recently.

I was talking about having a, you know, two of those trailers hooked up and weighing in at something like 17,000 pounds on the scale. Jesus. Obviously, you know, that's the cabin engine included, I believe. But, you know, that's not my world. I'm kind of completely unfamiliar with that side of things. But still, yeah, it's like a lot of weight, you know, is we're carrying so many packages every day. Yeah, it's a lot of wear and tear on the body. And management's always pushing you to move faster. To like, I had a worker who is a feeder driver for another hub.

And she was telling me that a supervisor there was telling newly hired part-time employees that it's actually safer to work faster instead of slower. What? Yes, yeah, that makes no fucking sense. No fucking sense at all. And like one of the reasons they have an incentive to make us work really fast,

which is that the full-time soups get a parts per hour bonus, depending on how fast we go. So, you know, they will harass you into working faster, even though, you know, we're moving these thousands of fucking packages, they'll harass us to move faster so that they get a bonus off of the packages that we handled and moved.

Yeah, I mean, like just last week in the, you know, I think it was like mid 90s outside or something. You know, we're not getting, oh, do you need water? Do you need to rest? It was, oh, you're not working fast enough. Like your packages per hour is, you know, too low. You know, is that kind of constant, you're not working fast enough. Like your package is per hour is too low. You know, is that kind of constant harassment

or maybe sometimes like, you know, I know my supervisor's a little bit more subtle about it, you know, versus, you know, outwiping. Like, oh, you need to work faster because that's the thing is in our contract, you know, there's no kind of productivity quota. You know, we work safe. We follow the methods. That's something I really try and, you know, there's no kind of productivity quota. You know, we work safe. We follow the methods. That's something I really try and, you know, really

focus on because, you know, ideally, you know, I want to, you know, I would like to be here longer. Yeah. So enough, that is for job with terrible conditions, but, you know, also it's a job that has a pension. And that, yeah, that's the big thing. And it's like, I don't, you know, what's a pension going to do pension. And that, yeah, that's the big thing. And it's like, I don't, you know, what's a pension going to do if, you know, I'm, you know, have some kind of, you know, grave injury from, from the job. Yeah. Or if that's fucking no pension, but still. Yeah, you're dead with heat exhaustion. I said, well, a pension doesn't pay out like,

like, yeah, it's just, it's just, yeah, it's wild, it's wild. Man, I'm going to be really excited to see how this, how this boat goes. Yeah, yeah, interesting day at work. Yeah, yep, yep. I'm sure that I'll have those people that know that I know about the union come up and talk to me to ask me what I think about it. Because I'm the only person they know that knows anything about the union because as we talked about earlier, union reps just are barely ever there. Yeah. And yeah, we'll see. We'll see. Man, that's, I'm just now really thinking about that 7500 full-time jobs, 3%. 2 or 3%, depending on the metric that you're looking at.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, not enough. No, no, no. Wild. Wild. And now. This is a best to delayed opportunity for a strike to build those as we talked about earlier. Those necessary necessary muscles that need to be exercised. Yeah. And that's at best. You know, we might have we might have missed it. Yeah. Yeah. We'll see. We'll see. Yeah. That that fucking sucks. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. Yeah, that fucking sucks. Oh, yeah.

What a curveball to get for the podcast. Well, unless you have anything else you want to talk about, um, yeah, actually going to wrap up this incredibly chaotic episode of it could happen here, in which we discovered the chaos of a not open bargaining process What that looks like life on air Yeah, yeah Siding times, but yeah, I think I think I'm good. I feel like I hit all my notes and some that I wasn't even planning on hitting because we had this New information so right and some that I wasn't even planning on hitting because we had this new information. So.

Right. Good Lord. And I was like, hey, we couldn't have been like an hour earlier, so I could have at least arrived at first. Oh, I was literally in the middle of the day. Well, now I'm going to go. It's like, oh, we got to be able to look

at some information and bear with us. I'm going to hop on this. Oh, my gosh. Well, you know, you can join us next for the live analysis of the over 300 page contract. Yeah. That we got like just the highlights. Oh, yeah, but thank you to both for, thank you to both for coming on and yeah, we can I guess I guess if the strike happens, we can talk to you again or maybe also if it doesn't,

I don't know. Yeah, yeah, if the strike happens, we can talk to you again, or maybe also if it doesn't, I don't know. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Thank you for having us on. Yeah, I'd love to stay in contact to talk about if we do go on strike or if we don't, with love, I would absolutely be open to a follow-up on that. And yeah, okay, so where can people go if they want to support the strike

or also potentially the reconfile workers who are trying to like make sure it happens? Yeah, I would say that a good place to follow or like a good source, I guess, to follow would be to follow the team serves for a democratic Union. If there is going to be any movement that is in the Union that's organized, it's going to be coming from them most likely. So they are the better version, I would say, to follow on that front. And of course, you can still follow the regular teamsters page and stuff like that to see what's going on. But yeah, yeah, that's going to be weird. I don't know what the TD line is going to

be on this. So it's like, we'll see. And you know, hopefully, you know, if we can strike, obviously, yeah, come out to support your, support your fellow workers and you know, too, will also be able to coordinate, you know, with rank and file and union reps. You know, what kind of needs there might be out on the picket line. Yeah. Yeah, also, yeah, yeah, thank you. Yeah, very much for having us. Yeah, thank you for coming on. Yeah, this has been it could happen here. Go on strike.

Don't let your leadership tell you not to go on strike. I'll simply do the big and organize it. You can do it again. Sacred Skandal, one of best new podcasts of 2022. The World It's the largest cult in the world that no one has ever heard of. For three generations, the Luz del Mundo had an incredible control on his community that began in Mexico and then grew across the United States until one day. A day of reckoning for the man whose millions of followers called him

the Apostle. Their leader was arrested and survivors began to speak out about the sexual abuse, the murder, and corruption. This is just a business and their product are people. They will kill you. Listen to all episodes now on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or whatever you get your podcasts. 911, what's your emergency? You shot her! Oh my God!

It's a nightmare we could never have imagined. And a killer who is still on the loose. My small town rocked by murder. There are certain murders I'm scared to discuss. In the 1980s, we're in high school losing friends, teachers, and community members. One after another, after another, for a decade. We weren't safe anywhere. We're teenagers terrified to leave our own homes.

Would we be next? Who is killing all the kids? And why? In that moment, I saw rage. And why do some want the town's secrets to stay dead and buried forever? I'm not sure why you're digging up all this old stuff again, but I'd be careful. Don't say I didn't warn you, Nancy. Listen to the Murder Years on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, what's up y'all? This is Eric Andre Andre, but I made a podcast called Bomming about absolutely tanking on stage. I'm talking about your most amazing hair and several experiences of the drama. I tell gnarly stories, and I talk to friends about their worst moments of bombing in all sorts of ways. Bomming on stage, bombing in public, bombing in life, like the time I stole a girl's phone during a set and she dumped on stage and threw a big A-maker punch to my nose. I want to know what's the worst way they ever bombed or performed way too drunk or high.

There was there every time where they thought they were going to crush and they stunk it up. Subscribe to my podcast Bombing with Eric Andre to hear more crazy stories from me and my friends. I'll have guests like Sam Jay, who Tulsa Sloan, Michelle Butteau, Max DeMarco, DJ Doug Pound, Saturday Night Lives, Sarah Sherman, and more! Listen to bombing with Eric Andre

on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the I-Hard Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you in your ear. It could happen at ear. That's what we should call it. Garrison, we're changing the name. We're rebranding our valuable, valuable titles, completely moving, moving overnight to a whole new thing based on a whim, you know. Master still gambits, sir.

Yeah, this is, this has been a fun week. We're all laughing a little bit of Elon Musk, but we have something serious to talk about today. And that is everybody's favorite fascist governor, Ron DeSantis. Garrison, you and I spent just way too much time last week talking about meatball, Ron. And now we're back. Now we're back to because he keeps meatballing. Meatball, Ron is ballin' and meatin'. Yeah, so we wrapped up like a two-part episode on Ron Dessendius' use of fast-rate aesthetics and then like two days later the funniest thing happened where he just decided to basically post-Songed Rads. So we're gonna get to that, but first there's a whole bunch of other information

that's come out these past like really three days that are actually giving more context to what's going on at the Decentre's campaign. Because stuff doesn't look too good actually. He kind of looks like he's losing everything as he slowly washes it all crumble. So let's start by talking about everyone's favorite topic, campaign finances.

I know this is what everyone tunes into listen to. Yes, we love campaign finances. Yeah, so last week, the public finally got a glimpse at Decentris' campaign finances. The financial disclosures showed that Decentis had about twice as much staff as Donald Trump. And as of last week, you know, Gerterson, you just said that. And I, I imagine in my head for a second that you were referring to the amount of staff infections he's had versus Donald Trump. That's not true. No, Trump's definitely had more staff infections. There's almost no way. Yeah,

that Trump is not leading in the staff infections category. Please, I'm sorry to interrupt. Um, but as of last week, the Florida governor had already spent about 40% of the $20 million fundraised from April to June of 2023. So the campaign's spending rate was averaging more than $212,000 per day, which is an astronomical cost for a campaign for someone like running for president basically for the first time. Yeah. This far out too from the season proper. Yeah, it's absolutely absurd.

The inflated number of staff, heavy use of private jets and luxury event venues has his campaign, essentially just burning through cash, with very little seem to come of it in terms of positive poll numbers. So another thing that these find. They've gained maybe a point or so on Trump over the last year. Yeah, after spending $200,000 per day for the past like four months, another thing that these financial disclosures exposed is DeSantis's heavy dependence on high contributors. So just about 15% of fundraising contributions

came from donors who gave less than $200 and the vast, vast majority of DeSantis's money has come from donors who gave the legal maximum of $3,300 in the primary, which also means that those who gave that cannot contribute any more money either. So he's running out of people that are actually able to fund his operation. Yeah. And it's worth noting he does have a super PAC.

You are not limited in how much you can donate to a super PAC, but super PACs cannot spend money on the same things as general campaign funds, right? Like there are limitations in what you can use that on. So this is actually a logistical problem for him that he is maxed out his donor base. Yeah. And the New York Times has reported that future, like large prospective donors have been spooked by DeSantis' sliding pull numbers, and they may be less willing to invest in what's looking

like a losing battle. So to combat these swelling campaign expenses, including $279,000 at the four seasons in Miami, DeSantis' telehassy based campaign has began undercoeing massive cuts to campaign staff this past week. Previously, DeSantis had upwards of 90 people on payroll, but just this month, they've eliminated 38 jobs in a variety of departments, cutting more than one-third of his payroll. DeSantis's cutbacks are nearly equal to the size of Trump's entire 2024 campaign staff. Decentres' campaign manager, Grenaropec, said in a statement, I believe late last week,

quote, following a top-to-bottom review of our organization, we have taken additional aggressive steps to streamline operations and put Rhonda Santis in the strongest position to win this primary end of feet Joe Biden. So that was their little statement accompanying the news of firing almost 40 people from their campaign. According to the New York Times, advertisers are, quote, promising to reorient the DeSantis candidacy as, quote, unquote, insurgent run and remake it into, quote, unquote, leaner, meaner operation. So this is the new strategy that they're trying to do is instead of having 90 people on staff

in a largely ineffectual strategy, have a more insurgent run with a smaller number of people. But in addition to the dozens of staff members who've been let go this July, two senior advisors have also departed this month to work for an outside pro-Decentus nonprofit. One of these senior advisors who was supposed to oversee the campaign's television messaging voluntarily left, quote, as the reality of a disappearing advertising budget set in. So these two more more kind of seasoned Republican

So these two more more kind of seasoned Republican advisors saw what was happening the campaign and they're still pro-desantis But they believe they can be more effective by working from outside of the actual campaign That's so funny Which is not a great sign for DeSantis's Internal internal team here if you have people like who still like you, but they just can't work for you because you're doing such a bad job So decided his team is now telegraphing a plan to engage with mainstream media that in the way that they have not previously done because they've So far kind of scornfully avoided it as we've talked about previously And they're calling this new strategy, the DeSantis is everywhere approach,

which is a genius Christ. Bad name for strategy. Well, part of the problem, Garrison, I don't know how to like, I can't like prove this the way that we prove, when we're tracing back the ideological roots of like a lot of our modern fascists. But what I believe in my heart is that so many of these very young people on the extreme

right who are driving this campaign, like just want to be villains from a bad late 90s, early 2000s movie, like they want to be the bad guy in the fucking superhero movie, right? You don't say that about a guy who's good. The Biden campaign, if they came to Joe, we're like, we want to do a Biden is everywhere thing. He'd be like, no, that sounds kind of creepy, guys. I already got a little bit of a problem with that. What would the hair sniff it?

I don't really want to jump on that, train. Yeah, no, it definitely has the vibes of like Zoomers who grew up watching like late 90s animated superhero cartoons, who are trying to like, yes, which I'm gonna like emulate that for some reason. There is one really funny quote from the times that I will read because it quotes like internal sources that I don't have access to.

But anyway, quote, one person close to Mr. DeSantis, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about a candidate whom the person still supports, said the governor had experienced, quote, unquote, a challenging learning curve that has left him, quote, unquote, a little bit jart. So you make this sound like a six-year-old who's like not quite progressing fast enough in the reading where they're like maybe we need to try teaching him another way. Like we'll get out the different colored books. Like, yeah, so he seems to have a rough adjustment period to campaigning in just more than one state and having an actual like opponent to go off against.

And also like an opponent who's like actually a good, like who's like good at being like a politician. Yeah. So yeah, a challenging learning curve indeed. I might, I might specify, I think I actually DeSantis is a lot better at being a politician than Donald Trump. But that's not what the competition is. Well, the Santas is better at being like an effective like governor.

He's better at the machinery of politics, whereas Trump is better at holding power within the GOP. Yeah, and being like a shaman. So we will, we will talk more about some, uh, some actually relatively breaking news regarding the DeSantis campaign. Surely I'm excited for this. I just saw this before we got on. Short, shortly after this outbreak. Okay.

We are, we are back. So a lot has happened the past two days. A lot has happened the past two hours, actually. Uh, but we're going to have to work our way there. The first bit of news that was kind of both, it was both confirming my suspicions and in very interesting piece of news in the first place is that that fast-wave inspired kind of homophobic Pride Month video that we talked about in our place is that that fast-wave inspired kind of homophobic pride month video that we talked about in in our last DeSantis fast-wave episode. It turns out to be slightly more self-inflicted than what

than what at least I I said in the episode because I didn't want to make claims that I couldn't back up. Because we have we have some some new information regarding this video. I'm going to quote from this article in the Times. Quote, a DeSantis campaign aid had originally produced the video internally, passing it off to an outside supporter to post it first and making it appear as if it was generated independently, according to a person with knowledge of the incident. Unquote.

So this video turned out to be actually be made in-house. This actually was made by someone who was working for Rhonda Santas as we speculated initially, but we couldn't really like say for sure because it was posted first on a third party like an account. Specifically the guy who was the one who shared it is the dude who made it. No, that is for this next video we're gonna talk about.

Yeah. The homophobic one was shared by this protestantist account called Proud Elephant, who had a corresponding telegram channel. This was the guy who posted the first homophobic meme one. But yeah, so we found out Sunday night that it was actually made by someone at the DeSantis campaign, which kind of justified a lot of our suspicions about DeSantis employing a staff of Zoomers who don't actually

understand how to win a political election, or more and shouldn't just creating fascist memes. Which seems to be not a very effective strategy for DeSantis so far. So again, just the day that this news broke that the video was actually made in a house. Another fascist wave inspired video, but with much, much more overt Nazi imagery was shared online by a DeSantis campaign staffer. Robert, have you seen this video? Yes. Okay. So I'm the son and rad video. Yes.

So we don't have to watch it here, but I will give a description of it for the people listening, because also we should probably shouldn't be sharing these things like everywhere on Twitter and stuff anyway. Like it's not, it's not a great idea, but it's not going to make you happier or help you in any way to see this. It's just like, it's surprising. I will say that I was surprised to see how flashy it was, to see how like explicitly accelerationist mash shooter fashion it was. Yes, this is like Christchurch kind of.

Yes. Yeah, so we're not going to share it, but it is useful to know what's in it. So I did write a pretty in depth description of this video here. So this video was posted on Sunday, July 23rd. It's about 70 seconds long. It plays over a Meg Meyers cover of the song, Running Up the Hill. Which was made, you know, wait, isn't that the one? That was the one that the new season of Stranger Things a while back,

like brought back to the main song. Poss, it is a Kate Bush original. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is it more like electronic cover of the song? Yes. It's talking about like, you know, like trying to like ask, a trying to like ask a god to help you with certain things. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, it starts with the Doomer Wojax sitting at a computer

looking at headlines about the ineffectiveness of Trump's border wall, unfulfilled anti-immigration policies, and Trump's pro-COVID vaccine statements. So I guess we should probably talk about what a woe jack is in case someone is unfamiliar. If you've ever spent any amount of time on the internet, you've probably seen memes with kind of crudely drawn like human faces and heads.

These are called woe jack memes. They're very popular in like political spheres. They kind of kind of rose to prominence on 4chan and spread out from there. Everyone kind of uses them nowadays. They're pretty common, but there's a few specific like Wojack characters. Like the chat is one. One of the more popular ones is the Doomer Wojack, which is someone who has taken the black pill, so to speak, they've looked at modern society and have decided that it's not worth engaging in. Now, there's tumors on the right,

there's tumors on the left, there's tumors who look at climate change and the acceleration of capitalism and just decide, hey, this is too far gone. So they become a tumor and they're on the left. There's also tumorsomers on the right who are looking at gay marriage and the acceptance of trans people.

I mean, like, oh, this is so socially degenerate. It's the society's too far gone. And then they become a doomer, but they're on the right. So it happens on both sides. When both sides use doomer memes, this one is because we're talking about it in this context of Fashion Wave.

This was obviously a fascist to Duma Meme. But that's kind of what I mean when I say there's a Duma Wojack sitting at a computer. It's like a guy with a beanie, like a scruffy beard. He looks like very depressed, and tired. That sort of thing. So as these kind of headlines about Trump's not conservative enoughness are flashing on this computer,

the Duma Rojek is looking increasingly disillusioned and apathetic, then there's the clip of Trump holding up a pride flag that plays right before we see Trump signing the first step act, the 2018 criminal justice reform bill, then headlines flash about violent criminals being released into the streets. That sort of thing. So the Doomer Bojack is looking at all these things about Trump, looking more and more depressed, when suddenly a doorway appears with an almost angelic light pouring in from behind,

and as the door opens, we see a silhouette of Rhondasantus. More short clips of Rhond play, and now the Wojack is looking happy, almost like exuberant, seemingly kind of random images of outer space, volcanoes, rocket launches, surfing, and the beach flash quickly on screen, with glitchy silhouettes of Rondasantis looming above coastal ocean side cities that are lit up by a sunset. I don't tread on Florida alligator flags spins onto screen like it's a fucking like MS paint like edit and then the video flashes more clips of DeSantis wearing sunglasses, standing in front of American flags, as the sunset, happy Wojack fades in.

So this is another Wojack meme of somebody almost like teary-eyed with like contentment staring into the horizon as like a sunset is behind their head. It kind of reminds me of like that guy who stole that plane in Seattle and he crashed it. Yes. Oh, yeah. Very sad story. If you're not aware of it, a man hijacked, I believe it was an Alaska airs flight a couple of years back. It was empty. He worked at the airport.

He just took the plane and he got up into the sky and then like he was kind of a dude who was sort of suicidal. There's very sad audio of him talking to you because he gets on with air traffic control and he makes sure that he's not going to hurt anyone else and like then the plane goes down, you know, he goes down in it and it's it's very bleak. He was not a man he wanted to hurt anybody. It's just this kind of like exists. I've heard I found it set to a lot of vapor wave tracks.

Actually, like the audience. Yeah, the conversation between them. Yeah. Cause he's kind of, I think a lot of people identify with his sense of like, I don't really know why I was ever here. I don't really know. Yeah. I'm doing it.

I'm doing it. I'm doing it. I'm doing it. I'm doing it. Yeah. I'm doing it. I'm doing doesn't know what to do with existence. Yeah. He had part of, he had like the 10, 10% of what a mass shooter has, which is exactly go out and I want to do something. But thankfully, he was also a good person and

didn't want to like murder strangers. So this became very popular on the internet, including on Reddit and 4chan. He was dubbed Sky King. And there's footage of him basically crashing this plane as the sun is setting. And there's footage of him flying around in sunset, played, often played with vapor wave, with his conversation with AirTrac for control. Now this is very popular.

The sunset Happy Wojack is very similar. I've seen people post this image in threads about Sky King before. And I think a lot of people don't understand. It's like this act, this Sky King thing. This has more in common with accelerationist terrorism than what most people can really understand. Between shooting a random person for violent crime and this, this is more, this is closer to why people do accelerationist, like, terroristic acts, but this guy was not actually a monster. So he didn't do that.

He explicitly didn't wanna hurt anybody. He explicitly didn't wanna try to land the plane at the airport because he thought he might hurt somebody. Yeah. And presumably since he worked at an airport, he had some knowledge of how easily that could go wrong. Yeah. So this, anyway, these two images are kind of linked often on the internet.

So anyway, we see the video getting more hopeful with Rhonda Santis having stupid fastwaive imagery. This sunset, as the doomer now has contentment. Then this is followed by very quick flashes of DeSantis. And more beach imagery, there's a lot of beach in this video. There's like this rotating sheet of stickers that read Make America, Florida. Then we get this shot of a small yacht zooming through the water with DeSantis campaign events played over top of the water. And during this shot, we have another Wojac holding a rifle wearing a camo military fatigues that slides onto screen. He has a patch

of the flag of Florida on his plate carrier and his helmet. We got more shots of beachfront cities and rocket launches followed by headlines about DeSantis on a variety of topics, including his anti-immigration actions, his use of Florida's National Guard in other states. DeSantis on a variety of topics, including his anti-immigration actions, his use of Florida's National Guard in other states, DeSantis's anti-diversity initiatives, his anti-education bills, his anti-drag bills, the cancellation of pride parades in Florida, and in general just kind of how DeSantis has been pushing Florida further right. So after this barrage of headlines, we get to the most mask-off moment of the video. The flag of Florida fills the screen with two lines of armed troops at either side,

marching towards the flag. A still photo of DeSantis is center frame with his head right in the middle of the seal of Florida, which is on the center of their state flag. The head in front of the seal creates this almost halo effect around the Santa's head, and then the seal turns into a spinning son and rad as we zoom into the symbol as troops march into center, and then the video ends. The son and rad is on screen for about 10 seconds. So this was a pretty upsetting thing to see on Twitter. Obsesting is one way to phrase. Yeah. And again, the the Saanen Rad has a long history. It's kind of

a specifically a cultic version of the swastika. It reached, it has been around for quite a while, but it's most recent. The kind of thing that brought it into modern prominence was the Christchurch shooter, chose it as the cover of his manifesto and also wore a son and Radip. Leave it was on the chest of his plate carrier when he carried out his massacre. He also had a couple on his gun, I think. Yeah. So, it's very clearly a Nazi symbol.

I know there's some people have make jokes about how this must have just been an Azov battalion reference, deeply unseurious. No, you can see some of these on Azov. I mean, again, yes, yes. Well, yes, yes, yes. This is a Nazi thing. They wear this too. Yes, yes.

Yes. And Azov uses it. There's people trying to excuse the use of the sun and red by saying, oh, it's a Justin Azov symbol. It's not a Nazi thing. Which is bad. And this is bad. Which is a deeply unseerious thing to say.

So yeah, this video was shared by at least one campaign staffer. It's a very short video, but it plays into a strain of accelerationist propaganda tropes that even the previous Fashway video didn't even really have in many of the same ways. Like all of the Duma Wojax slowly becoming happy and content than putting on military fatigues to go fight for Ron Decentis,

who's now in the center of like a haloed son and rad. Like it is emulating a type of meme that both gained popular in order to specifically like inspire mass shootings to happen. And also to like to get young depressed males to channel their depression into like fascism. It has a whole bunch of tropes, like it's really just like playing by the playbook.

Um, so the video was first posted on the Twitter account Ron DeSantis fan cams, which is a horrible sentence. Yeah. The account is a few months old, but it's visible posts only go back to June. They post a lot of videos, all in a very similar style, which leads you to believe that whoever

operates the account must be making the videos themselves. One video from the account plays clips of people describing DeSantis as fascist, edited together with clips of DeSantis deploying National Guard and calling for civilian state military force under his control. All sliced together next to footage of Nazis and Mussolini played over an upbeat EDM track. So it's all like explicitly fascist stuff. Like like it's people like rev,

like it's like a proudly embracing the fascist label. So this style of video is almost identical to the homophobic Pride Month video that we discussed last week. And considering the recent news that the other video shared by the DeSantis Warren account was secretly made by a campaign staffer that led myself and others to assume that this Saunin Red video was most likely made by the same person inside DeSantis' campaign and

was operating this DeSantis fancam account as a sock puppet. But I could not prove this myself really. It's a hard thing to kind of backtrack. This account was pretty clean in terms of like I tried to do pretty basic, I was on this account, but I could not find out much about it. But the campaign staff member that first shared this Saun and Rad video to his own Twitter

account was former National Review Writer, Nate Hockman. We will talk about Nate Hockman's exploits shortly after this, this hat break. All right. We are back. And in a, in a much better position currently than 25-year-old Nate Hockman. Yes. So really was a, tragically was a promising career. You know what?

Let's give him another chance, Garrison. Really? Reach out to Nate. We can bring him on the team. You know, have him start making some videos for us. Yeah, I'll build an invoice to Nate Hawkman's address. Yeah. I'll see where he lives.

So 25-year-old Nate Hawkman has been working as a speech writer for Decentrises campaign after rising to prominence among young conservatives for his online references and willingness to entertain ideas outside the Overton window. Hawkman hosted a Twitter space late last year centered around the question of if white supremacists like Nick Fuentes should have a place in the modern conservative movement.

Fuentes himself appeared in the Twitter space and Hawkman thanked him for radicalizing children, by saying, quote, you've gotten a lot of kids based, and we respect you for that. And he also said that Fuente's quote is probably a better influence than Ben Shapiro on a young man who might otherwise be conservative, unquote.

So Hawkman has retweeted the Decentis fancam account at least six times before he shared this on and right of video this past Sunday, but he's not the only Decentis linked account to share these videos. The campaign's War Room Twitter account and the Pro Decentis never back down SuperPack have also shared videos from this Rondasantis fancam Twitter account. By using this fancam account to post videos, and then by retweeting on Nate's account, someone was certainly testing the waters to see how close the Decentis campaign can get to doing explicit Nazi shit.

And considering the New York Times, who Hawkman has written for by the way, basically confirming that the person who made the Pride Month video was secretly employed by DeSantis and posted via third party to get some distance from the official campaign, this led many to suspect that Hawkman was secretly the person behind this fancam account due to the similarities in video styles and his frequent boosting of the account. The Sun and Red video was deleted the same day it was posted, and the fancam account has not posted since then.

But then suddenly, just a few hours ago, as of time of recording, news dropped that Nick Hockman has been fired from the DeSantis campaign, and the sources at Axios confirmed that he has in fact secretly been making these fast way videos. So it was it was hot went on all along. This is what happens when you hire a 25 year old groy warrior to work on your to work on your presidential bid. You're very serious presidential campaign. Yeah. So the Descendants campaign officially has only said a few words on the subject. Quote, Nate Hockman is no longer with the campaign and we will not be commenting on him further.

Not that easy, guys. But other anonymous sources have confirmed to news outlets that it was Hawkman who was making these videos. So this is weird because like this hasn't been a great move for Decentis, hiring Hawkman, having Hawkman do all this like behind the scenes like Scooby Doo, shit of like posting fascist videos on sock puppins to then get reboosted by the Santas campaign. Like it's all, it's all very like dark, but like comical, like it's, it's silly. Like similar to the Descendants video we talked about in the last adventures in Fashion Week episode, this video, it was not meant to like convince older Trump supporters to vote for Descendants, right?

Like that's not the intention of posting this video. No. Um, this new video, they're trying to, they are, first off, going for the Zoom not the intention of posting this video. No. This new video is... They're trying to... First off, going for the Zoom Revote, always a mixed bag. Oh, it's a bad call. Anytime you're going for the youth vote, this is like famously a difficult thing. It kind of sometimes works for the DIMS because the youth tend to be pretty progressive

and the Republicans are terrifying. Yeah. But going for the trying to base your campaign as a Republican presidential candidate on the Yutts is quite a move. Yeah, like it's, let's see how it pays off for him, gotten. Yeah, because like this new video is almost more chronically online than the last one. Like not even considering the Nazi imagery, it's, it's have a use of Wojack memes is just

like cartoonish to the median voter. What this video is trying to do is signal to self-described fascists that DeSantis is their guy and trying extremely desperately to create another like meme-magic moment, like we had in 2016, to recruit a slew of teenage Nazis to try and meme another based president into office. Which isn't going to work this time around, because it's not 2016 anymore. We've already been anoculated to some degree to this style of campaign tactics. All of the people, like 4chan, isn't the thing that it used to be. It is a shell of its former self.

But like what we have here on the DeSantis side is in terms of hiring people like Hawkman, right? These are like seasoned groipers who grew up and are now like getting into their 20s. You know, they're taking jobs at national review and as campaign staffers. But due to their isolated niche political upbringing, they have deluded themselves into thinking that there is like a mythical far right youth voting block that just like quite simply doesn't exist. So you can spend all day making and retweeting these meme-heavy videos with Nazi imagery that

really only succeed in turning off the reliable boomer Republican voters. Now, there's a few other future scenarios here. If these up-and-coming groipers continue to grow up, polish their act, take more jobs as staffers or on Capitol Hill, and like slowly grow in numbers as they learn to like hide their power level, like, yeah, like hide their amount of racism. Then we might have a problem if they like actually like put like intentionality into a long term strategy to like put more of these young freaks into positions in Washington. But we're simply not there yet.

Like in the case of Hawkman, he kind of just like, he blooped the spot, right? Like, he went too hard, too fast, and then he got fired because they don't want that shit. Yeah, the olds are going to watch this and go like, what the fuck is this? This does not look serious. This is not speaking to my issues. This is just like off putting in strange. And most young people are like, oh, it's some brain poison forchander. That's who this guy is running as the forchand candidate. Yep. All right. Now, like, so the other fear is that they'll shift from like this electoral focus and try to just use this type of video propaganda

to initiate another wave of Nazi mass shootings like in 2018. The halo effect around DeSantis's head is certainly cause for concern, but there's a lot of other factors that go into that sort of thing. And that is kind of just more of an ever-present fear that anti-fascists have.

And people do a lot of work into trying to catch these guys before they actually do mass shootings and try to isolate the spread of this style of propaganda for that very reason. So, yeah, I mean, it's certainly an interesting trajectory. When I started finishing this episode earlier today, I had no idea that Hawkman was gonna get fired. I had no idea that it was going to be confirmed that Hawkman was the one making these videos. So that's kind of some breaking news on our side. It's been a few days if you're listening to this at the end of the week.

I'm going to read out one tweet from this guy, a double-dowing, who is a stupid, stupid handle, no offense. But he made a pretty good point here. I am quote, I think DeSantis' real problem isn't just that he's racist. It's that his campaign is racist in the same way a really annoying teenager is. Your average xenophobic suburbanite dad

looks at a son and a rat, Wojack, ad, like his son crashed his car. A lot of people are arguing that your average 56 year old Trump supporter isn't as racist, it's your average de-santis supporting zoomer, but that's not the point. Putting weird blood and soil shit in your ads smells. It's deeply uncool to the exact people that you want to impress. I'll add, it's deeply uncool to the exact people you want to impress, unquote. And Aladdin, it's deeply and cool to the exact people you want to impress.

If you want to win at being president and like are trying to move over Trump voters, it's just, it's just, it's just not gonna play. So this is the state of the DeSantis campaign now. They've, they've shed almost 40 people from their staff. The guy that was supposed to lead their television ads has left. They seemingly just have no idea what the fuck to do. They tried to have this guy do this like

back door Nazi video sock puppet strategy that is also resulted in not very good things for the dissentist campaign. So I guess we'll see how their campaign develops. If they continue this sort of like, Fashion Wave rhetoric and style, I kind of doubt it, now that Hawkman is out. But yeah, it's been a certainly interesting, interesting few months here, or a few weeks here, rather,

in terms of... In Fashion Wave videos resurfacing again for the first time in quite a while, in terms of mainstream political use. Yeah, I'm kind of suspecting that this might be the death knell of that as a, at least for a spell, as a relevant form of propaganda. Yeah, I mean, it's been in some ways like internally rejected at the

DeSantis campaign. And he is arguably the most fascist mainstream candidate that we like have right now. Nothing puts a stink on stuff like this like failure, right? You know, these guys, these guys are not anarchists. And the anarchists are, we nearly always lose. So there's this, because things fail, there's a lot of Spanish civil war, iconography and stuff that's still very relevant on that chunk of the left. But with the right, it is all about power.

And when something like this fails, when it actually weakens a campaign when it weakens the insurgent right when it makes them less able to exert power. Yeah, I kind of feel like we may have seen the last of this as a thing that matters, right? Yeah, I'll definitely be watching these next few months, but I think that's definitely a very, a very fair assessment at this point. few months, but I think that's definitely a very fair assessment at this point. Lastly, I just want to clarify one thing about our last episode due to some viewer feedback. So last time we were talking about how the Biden administration's use of dark branded memes had inadvertently led to fashion wave taking a big body blow.

Now I think some people misinterpreted our discussion as downplaying antifascists and leftists attempt to disrupt dark mega and fasciotic in general by proliferating the satirical dark branded memes. So, in the episode we talked about the methodology behind this strategy of like, normies seizing onto memes and aesthetics, thus making them cringe and unattractive to the niche groups that once enjoyed using them. With Dark Brandon, there was certainly an attempt from antifascists and leftist posters

to appropriate fascist-waves aesthetics with the hope that if spread widely enough, it would disarm some of fascist-waves more dangerous and inspirational aspects. But you can't really force mainstream virality. This kind of thing works best when it appears natural. And for the majority of dark Brandon posters, they were just doing this shit first like shits and giggles. That was the primary factor, is that it was funny. And no effort to damage fash waves legibility would really be successful without mainstream liberal spread. A small group of leftists could meme like eternally, but until it breaks through that bubble, it would have little to no effect.

Now, because of how Twitter's algorithm worked during the summer of last year, after a few months, Dark Brandon did in fact break through to the liberal mainstream. But I've seen nothing to suggest that the White House staff had any intention of trying to damage Fashwaves legibility by sharing laser I memes in August of 2022. I think the key here is that you were not saying this was purely the result of liberals accidentally like jumping on to this, but that the primary, like success was achieved, like the part of the success that was achieved as a result of this going like mainstream among

Biden supporters was accidental. Yes. And that was the part that was key, not saying that the people who recognized this and were putting in the background work to try to push this stuff and make it, you know, eventually go viral. That was certainly not accidental, but the part that the liberals played was an accidental part in killing this.

That's the point. Yes, because what I mean by accidental is that when Dark Brandon started in March of 2022, there was no way to guarantee that four months later, the White House and Blue Wave Liberals would be sharing these memes on mass. I remember conversations I had last August when Liberals were seemingly ruining

the funny, dark branded memes, but myself and research colleagues during this time, that was when we realized that if Liberals keep sharing these cringy memes, we might actually have a shot at killing off a fast wave. So yes, this was to not discount the efforts of anti-fascists or others who pioneered the spread of dark Brandon and their attempts to insert it into greater public consciousness. But I think to frame this as like a meticulously planned, a slyop from the very start is also

kind of inaccurate in like a very like spotlighted way. Like this was, this was a collaborative effort with the liberals not realizing the degree that their collaboration played in this larger game of trying to disarm fascist aesthetics and meme styles. So yeah, that's one clarifying note as we hopefully wrap up this DeSantis-Fashway saga

for the time being, because I definitely did not plan on making this episode when I finished recording last week with you, so here we are. Cool. Alright. That's the episode. That's the episode. The End Sacred Skando, one of the best new podcasts of 2022, is back with a closer look at the darkness surrounding mega-church la luz del mundo, and its leader, Nasson Joaquin Garcia. They believe that he was Jesus Christ on Earth. It wasn't even so much that he liked sex.

He wanted something to pray. It's the largest cult in the world that no one has ever heard of. For three generations, the Luz del Mundo had an incredible control on his community that began in Mexico and then grew across the United States. Until one day. A day of reckoning for the man whose millions of followers call him the Apostle. Their leader was arrested and survivors began to speak out about the sexual abuse, the murder, and corruption.

This is just a business and their product are people. They want to know that they will kill you. Listen to all episodes now on the I Heart Radioard Ready Up, Apple Podcasts, or whatever you get your podcasts. 911, what's your emergency? You shot her! Oh my God! It's a nightmare we could never have imagined. And a killer who is still on the loose.

My small town rocked by murder. There are certain murders I'm scared to discuss. In the 1980s, we're in high school losing friends, teachers, and community members. One after another, after another for a decade. We weren't safe anywhere. We're teenagers terrified to leave our own homes. Would we be next? Who is killing all the kids?

And why? In that moment, I saw rage. And why do you some want the town secrets to stay dead and buried forever? I'm not sure why you're digging up all this old stuff again, but I'd be careful. Don't say I didn't warn you, Nancy. Listen to the murder years on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts

Hey, what's up y'all the Zerogondrake But it made a podcast called bombing about absolutely tanking on stage I tell gnarly stories and I talked to friends about their worst moments of bombing and all sorts of ways I talk to friends about their worst moments of bombing and all sorts of ways. Bombing on stage, bombing in public, bombing in life. Like the time I stole a girl's phone during a set and she dumped on stage and threw a big A-maker punch to my nose. I want to know what's the worst way they ever bombed or performed way too drunk or high. It was there every time where they thought they were going to crush and they stunk it up.

Subscribe to my podcast, bombing with Eric Andre to hear more crazy stories from me and my friends. going to crush and they stunk it up. big money players network on the iR radio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Eeeeeeeee host, Mia Wong, and with me, Shereen. Hi Mia, I'm so glad to join you on this really uplifting episode. Yeah, it's gonna be great. So, yes. All right, as anyone who studied, like, even a little bit of labor history knows, the fight over child labor is very, very old. It is one of the first causes

to sort of liberal reformers the capitalism took up nearly 1,800s. Like, it's like in the communist manifest It is one of the first causes to sort of liberal reformers that capitalism took up nearly 1800s. Like, it's like in the communist manifesto was one of the things, it's actually one of the things people point out is like, oh, we've done all the things that was in the original communist manifesto. And it's like, no, no, we never got rid of this. I, you know, it's also one of the things

that like you get these sort of like capitalist, chayomphless accounts. So like, oh, we eliminated child labor. This is like, this is proof the system works. Yeah. No, the battle over child labor is a battle that we are in the middle of losing. We are losing it in worse and worse ways every day.

So, okay, so why, why are we, why are we dealing with a new resurgence of child labor in this country? There's a lot of reasons. One of the big problems is that vast swaths of the U.S. sees child labor as morally good. You know, they see it as something like, oh, this is like, you teach your kids, it's like how you, yeah, this is like how they grow up and get responsible. And yeah, and then this is true in a lot of parts of the world. It's also completely and absolutely bonkers. It is just it's just nuts like people who shouldn't think like this. It's incredibly weird and

The everything you get a lot is like there's you know, they're sort of like different versions of like more or less socially acceptable child labor. I think most people agree if you're not running the business that children shouldn't be working in slaughterhouses or whatever. There's lots of things that people are like, oh no, kid working in a restaurant. That's completely fine. It's a 14-year-old is doing farm work on a farm. That's fine. But it's a slippery slope, right?

Because it starts to work. Farm work and then trickle trickle down. And also like I would argue that that's also not fine because what's essentially happening here is that there's this basically like this sort of family loophole to people's understanding of child labor where like as long as child labor is being done by the family as an economic unit,

instead of capitalist directly, like, it's fine, it's like, no, no, it's not, it's actually not fine to be working, to be a child and working for a living for your family. Like, that's not okay. It's just your good. There's a difference between, I think there's a difference between, I think there's a difference between like child labor

and like working in a field for your family versus like a chore. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. I think that line gets blurred and people see their kids as much more mature than they are and like able to like, no, I understand what you're saying

and I think I agree. I think I agree. I think I agree. Yeah. And it's, I don't know, it sucks. This has a lot of sort of knock on effects. One of the big knock on effects it has. And this has been a thing for like the entire history of childhood, but right, is that like capitalist use

children as a way to drive down wages for everyone else. And this, you know, if you ever listen to argue to someone about the minimum wage, right? One of the big arguments about the minimum wage is that like, oh, well, it's like kids get the minimum wage, so it's fine. It's like one, it's not, like children are not morally worth less, and their labor is also not

worth less than an adult. Like, if you're gonna experience more than like this, like, yeah, like things are the same price for everybody. It's not like less for a child. Yeah, it's not like a kid is like somehow less of a human being than an adult, right? Like this is the sucks. But it's used to sort of hold down wages directly

through things like opposing minimum wage increases used to hold down wages directly because, and this is another reason like capitalist love child labor is that children are, you know, like, they're physically smaller than adults, they're easier to control, they have less social power. And because, you know, because of that, you can pay them less, and because of, you know, because, because people just in our society don't fucking like kids. And because of that, it's so it's just socially

acceptable to just pay them less. All those reasons you listed are absolutely terrifying though. Like, oh, they will listen. Oh, they're smaller. Oh, they're like cheaper, whatever it is. They're all like terrible reasons to justify child labor. It's a certain. No, they're not good. They're not good. And yet, however, comma, it still persists. It has persisted. It's very old. I'm going to read something from the Bureau labor statistics about this fucking kid who was working in a mine.

What? OK, this was from the early 1900s. One boy touchingly recounted his attitude towards facing the day at the mind this way. I'll always think of my poor blind father or my mother at home, but I won't never play with the boys at all. And then the cracker boss won't have to beat me like he does the others. This boy was 9 years old. While stories like these produced outrage in many quarters in the co-producing regions, there is no such concern.

The view that quote, the little devils like it as one co-boss put it, seemed to be the prevailing sentiment. Child labor wasn't discussed in these regions because it wasn't seen as an issue. So this is like 1900s American view, like early 1900s American view on this, right? Like people, by people, I mean capitalists

and also people who are incredibly desperate and don't have enough money to get by, like love child labor. There's, you know, it takes a long time for like an actual series, the anti-child labor campaign to like get started in the US. And of course, the exact people who you would expect to oppose banning child labor,

oppose banning child labor. I'm gonna read this from the, I, also from the Braille labor statistics. The chairman of the National Association of Manufacturers said about a law to abolish child labor. Quote, this union, this labor union plot against the advancements and happiness of the American boy is a ploy is also a ploy against individual industrial expansion and prosperity in this country. So this is one of the things, their argument is that children don't oppose child labor.

This is being foisted upon them by outside agitated labor unions and also if we're not allowed to use child labor, if we're not allowed to have a nine year old, be put in a mine, the entire American economy will collapse and every manufacturer will go broke. It's like making you like being like child labor because patriotism, that's basically what that means. Yeah, it's genuinely terrible.

Like I don't know, it's so ghoulish. Like companies today have figured out how to do this PR thing of like, oh, we don't condone child labor, we crack down on it very seriously. We also hire children literally all the time, but it's fine. We're just we're gonna like, yeah, but back in like 800, they hadn't really figured that out yet. And so, you know, there's this sort of reform movement that happens.

And one of the sort of key moments of this reform thing is the Lauren's textile strike. And this strike is probably most famous today for popularizing the slogan we want bread and roses to, which is, you know, like, rung down the halls of labor in socialist history, it's like the names of newspapers, songs, poems, and also like, being the namesake of a truly dog shit, DSA caucus. We're not going to talk about this strike enormously here. The short, the very, very short version of this strike, this is a 1912 strike. The short version of it is that there's a law passed in Massachusetts that would have reduced the number of hours that you could have women and children work from a blistering

56 hours to a leisurely 54 hours a week. Oh my god. This prompted the local capitalists to get so mad that they did this massive, like industrial speed-ups. They forced everyone to work faster, and then also doctor everyone's paid for it. And this set off a strike, which relevant for our stories, that the workers at this plant, there's lots of coverage of the fact that most of these workers are immigrant women from a bunch of different places.

The part of it that's not talked about as much is that another huge portion of the workers were just fucking children. That definitely seems to get glossed over. Yeah, yeah. And it's like, I don't know. Maybe we should go back and talk about that part because it's really important for the stuff we're going to talk about later in this episode that made me so angry I was like physically punching my pillow. What happens next is that the police crack down on the strike gets more and more violence.

As this goes on, the workers at the adult workers at this plant decide, okay, we're going to send the children who are both the child workers and also like just people's kids to New York to keep them safe and also to make a political point, but like, hey, look, they're running our children out of town. And this goes great, the first ways this go great for the children, like a bunch of people in New York show up

are like, yeah, hey, we'll take care of these kids. Like, and this makes like the officials in Lawrence be like, you have to stop this. It looks really bad for us. And so they like assembled outside of the next train that was trying to leave and tried to stop them. Oh my God. So here shouldn't be really racist again.

When the next group of children prepared to depart the train station, they were met by police and soldiers. The police refused to let them board the trains and launch an attack on the group. A seven-year-old was given a black eye when she was picked up and thrown into a patty wagon by police.

Another witness testified to children being thrown around like rags. Oh my God. Wait, God. Like, yeah, thin blue-lied baby, let's fucking go. This is the thing the cops are the thin blue line who order and chaos. That civil rule goes.

Yeah, civil rule goes. I'm gonna throw herself around, right? Like, someone has to beat up this children. And for that, there is the few, the proud, the American police. But they were scared for their lives. You know what I mean? Like, they're seven year olds.

That seven year old girl looked at me really aggressively. Yeah, I was scared for their lives. You know what I mean? They're so good. They're so good. That seven year old girl looked at me really aggressively. Yeah, I was scared for my life. That's what they said. It's, it's, you know, it's, this is bad. And like, you know, the 1900s police can get away with like, 1900s police, we've talked about this in other episodes. Like, they can get away with just like shooting people, right? Like they can, they can show up to like a strike

and just open fire into the crowd. And it doesn't do anything. All right. Throwing around a bunch of children like rags, finally it turned out was the thing that was bad enough that it like started a congressional investigation. Wow, I guess that's good and bad, but. Yeah.

So so call this launch of this investigation. And there's like 14 year old immigrant girl named Kamela T.E. Testifies about how she was working at the mill when a machine caught her hair and tore her scalp off The police promptly and this is going and okay, the police promptly arrested her debt Didn't do anything to the company and arrested her dad for lying about her age. Oh my God, what? Now, this, hold that one in your fucking mind because we're gonna come back to that shit. Do I have to?

Okay, unfortunately, because it's gonna get so much worse when I tie this episode as over. So the product of this is that there starts to be like a really mainstream push against child labor, which is, you know, I think you would have thought what it started earlier because again, we're on like century two of child laborer of the US by this point, right? Like in an entity called the United States, but you know, apparently it takes this to actually make people go,

wait, maybe this is bad. And the product of this is, you get this thing called the Kenning Owen Child Labor Act in 1916. Now, as we sort of talk about earlier, right? The weakness of this law is that it allows kids to be used as laborers like inside of the family unit. So like if you're on a family unit, and this is a very, very broad category, right? So you can force your child to work as long as

like your parents, right? You're the one making the money off of them and not like a capitalist. But even this, even this is considered too strong of a law. And in 1918, the Supreme Court rules and its unconstitutional to ban child labor. Wait, what? Yeah, they do these multiple times. multiple times. Multiple times. And we really cannot emphasize this enough on this show. The Supreme Court has always been just one of history's greatest monsters. Like, there.

Wait, I was right then. Child labor does equal patriotism. That's basically what they're saying. So eventually, FDR gets into this giant fight with his Supreme Court. And the first child labor law we get, federal child labor law that gets that sticks, doesn't happen till 1938 when FDR threatens to pack the court if the court refuses to fucking stop saying

that the state doesn't have the power to regulate child labor. Well, it's like literally less than a century ago. That is yesterday. Yeah, and today. You know, but, but, but, and this actually works, right? But, but, and this is a real problem. And this is a problem that we're going to, we're going to talk about later in this fucking

episode in the modern day. Those child labor laws don't get enforced. It doesn't, that act, that actual, the 1938 Fair Labor Act, like basically doesn't actually do shit to reduce the amount of child labor in the country. And here's the thing, even now, even before all the horror show stuff that we're about to get to, that's happening right now,

like, not kids, we never actually dealt with child labor if you like the law. Like we just basically outsourced, okay, we had to find someone whose labor is cheaper than an American child. And we did is either like mechanization other immigrants who don't have legal citizenship status or just outsourcing.

And then our kids still fucking do work. Like it's very common for 10 and 12 year olds to work. It's just that it's usually like babysitting or like Boeing lawns. And we've decided that like no, this is actually fine. Like it is actually fine to fucking put 12 year olds on a labor market. Yeah, I mean, I think most people today anyway,

I think the common person thinks that child labor happens like in other countries over there. You know what I mean? I don't think they think America is still that archaic and stupid. Yeah, and oh my god, yeah. So we need to take an ad break and then I'm not even going to make a joke about that our sponsors and child labor because like Jesus fucking Christ, this is good about to be it so bad.

But yeah, here's some ads. Okay, so, you know, we never really got rid of child labor, right. What we did basically was to some extent, we've been able to successfully decrease the severity of it. And in the last 20 years, there'd been a decline in what economists and I really cannot emphasize enough,

this is the actual phrase they use is child participation in the labor market. Wow. That's so... Yeah. The nila of a way to say that. So, return to present day, present day, the thing that's been happening in the last few months

is that in a five week span in this country, three children died, or I would actually argue, we're killed by their employers on the job. Well, five children in, three children in five weeks. So 16, these kids were all 16. 16 year old, DuVent Thomas Perez got killed by Michigan, we had a conveyor belt. 16 year old Will Hampton died working at a landfill.

And 16 year old Michael Scholes died working for a logging company. There have been other child labor deaths recently. Those are just sort of the most recent ones. And I want to get into the shit that's been happening because in the last, really in the last, say, a bit under like eight years, things have gotten, you know, like the child labor situation in the US was never good

and we'll talk about that later. But like, things have gotten so much worse. There's been an almost a factor of four increase since 2015 and kids working illegally and has just jobs. It's actually probably, well, it's unclear to me whether the numbers are actually worse than that. I don't know, because I think almost all of this, these districts are being undercounted,

like dramatically, because those numbers are just violations that are caught and go into that a bit later. But meanwhile, like right now, Arkansas, Iowa, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Vermont have already passed laws in the last two years that weaken restrictions on child labor and bills are appearing like across the country

to do fucking board the same stuff. Like they want to allow 14 year olds to serve alcohol in bars. It's, you know, it is truly horrific. And it's being driven by restaurant business associations across the country who want to, you know, use child labor. And that's bad. The fact that there's more stuff that's, you know, is on the horizon is not good. But for an enormous number

of people, regardless of what the law says, situation is absolutely intolerable. Here's from the New York Times. In many parts of the country, middle and high school teachers in English, Lane, Gwich, Lerder programs say it is now common for nearly all of their students to rush off to long shift after their classes end. They should not be working 12 hour days, but it's happening here. Said Valeria Lindsay and arts, language arts teacher at Homestead Middle School near Miami. For the past three years, almost every eighth grader in her English learner program about a hundred students was also carrying an adult workload. So there's been a massive surge

since 2021 in only company minors entering the US. And this has been driven by a lot of sort of, you know, it's been driven by sort of pandemic pandemic, pandemic driven poverty, a massive upsurge of violence in a bunch of countries, Central America, a lot of which has to do with like, you know, the US backed Kuhnell, South of the door about a decade ago. I, you know, there's a lot of stuff going on. It's all very bad. And it's been pushing people here.

I'd, but you know, like the, the, the, the, the situation for immigrants getting into the US is never good. But Biden specifically has managed to make it worse because Biden's sort of, like, Biden's immigration policy has been resting on getting kids out of shelters as fast as humanly possible and just like throwing them at literally anyone who claims to be a sponsor. Right. And, you know, this has gone about as well as you would expect it would when someone like starts to, you know, one of the, I think it was the New York Times was talking about this woman who was working, quit working in a health and human services like office

because they had a quota of getting rid of 20% of their kids a week. And if they didn't do it, they would get a quota. Yeah, they had a quota for, we need to get 20% of the kids out of the shelter every week. Wow. In the last two years, they have lost track of a third of the kids they send out, which is, again, the last two years alone,

at least 85,000 children, they've just lost. I don't fucking know where they are. Here's some New York Times again. It's getting to be a business for some of the sponsors and yet, Pasalakwa, who left her job as a case worker in Central Florida last year. Miss Pasalakwa said she saw so many children put to work and found law enforcement officials so unwilling to investigate these cases that she largely stopped reporting them. Instead, she settled for explaining to the children

that they were entitled to lunch breaks and overtime. Wow. Wow. And, you know, I wanna make really clear what we're talking about here, right? This is not, you know, like I don't think, like, you know, whatever your position is on like, whether like a 12 year old or 14 year old

should be working any job at all. We are talking about 12 year olds working on factories, we are talking about 13 year olds, cleaning up the floors of slot, the kill floors of slaughterhouses. We are talking about like, we are talking about 14 year olds who are like literally making food that like you are eating. Yeah. Yeah. And we're still right. So this is happening in a large part because there's been a sort of like a giant surgery on a company of minors. Well it turns out a lot of those minors are on a company because the Biden administration wouldn't let their fucking parents into the country. on a company because the Biden administration wouldn't let their fucking parents into the country.

And this is where we need to get into the fucking, like, the whole sort of, like, sex trafficking panic, right? Because, you know, one of the things that this panic specifically about sex trafficking has covered up is that most human trafficking is not sex trafficking. It's almost all labor trafficking, almost also a huge, strong word, but it's mostly by volume. Most of it is labor trafficking, which nobody gives a single shit about because there's no, you can't have a moral panic around, like you can't have a moral panic around labor trafficking

like people who aren't white. And simultaneously, all the business groups who would normally fund these panics like love this shit because, you know, all of these capables ghouls drinking a thousand dollar bottles of wine under 30 million dollar yachts. All of that shit is paid for by child labor. So of course they don't give a shit about it.

In fact, they love it. And the product of this is you have a bunch of fucking 12-year-olds who are effectively in debt bondage, working 12 hours of fucking day in a slaughterhouse or a paper mill. I'm gonna, I'm gonna read another thing for New York Times, which is I, I don't know, so many of these things are so depressing, but like, I think this is the most depressing thing I've read in this entire, I don't know, like in ages, I didn't get how expensive everything was. Says 13 year old Jose Vazquez,

who works 12 hour shifts six days a week at a commercial egg farm in Michigan and lives with his teenage sister. I'd like to go to school, but then how would I pay rent? 13. 13. 13. You know, and of course, one of, you know, like the everything about this, right, is these, these are people dealing with the

fucking American housing market, right? The American housing market is intolerable to adults who work full time, who work like full time jobs or multiple part time jobs, right? This is a 13-year-old. How the fuck is a 13-year-old supposed to be paying rent, right? And every sort of additional thing just makes it worse because the more of these kids, and one of the things that's happening is these kids are getting funneled into very specific areas, right? Because they're getting funneled into very specific areas, right? Because you're getting funneled to like specific towns,

because that specific towns have a bunch of companies who specifically want to hire these migrant kids. And when they do that, that fucking continually drives out the price of housing, because all of these people are competing for the same like fucking one-bedgy apartment for $1,600 and a bunch, right? Yeah. And so everything just sort of spirals in on each other.

And until you get a fucking 13-year-old working, working, this is 9.96. This is the fucking thing I talk about in China. It's 9am, 9pm, six days a week at a fucking egg farm in Michigan. In any just world, people would die for this. In this world, in, you know, people have fucking died for this. It's a bunch of children who are dying on their fucking jobs. In this world, though, the people, you know,

the people who die for this are children. And the Biden administration, again, is actively eating fucking human traffickers by kicking all these kids out to their families, kicking all these people out to just like fucking anyone as soon as humanly possible and not allowing these people's families into the country and then doing literally nothing at all

to ensure that like the people who are fleeing into this country like have a place to live or like any kind of reasonable job or any way to support themselves. You know, and we could we could fucking like there are there are individual people in the US who benefit from this child labor who you could fucking like throw into a box tomorrow. Take all of their money and you could fund this entire program. There are individual people, right? No one will fucking do it. They will let these kid, they will let every single one of these kids die before a single billionaire has to fucking

spend a single cent taking care of these kids. Meanwhile, the actual child laws that exist in this, you know, that exists in the US are completely useless because regulatory agencies are taking one of two approaches. Either they do nothing or they spend some time investigating so they can get a cut of the child labor money by issuing a fine to the company. Oh, are you fucking kidding me? I get the worst and worst. Now, and this is the fun part, merely taking a cut of the child labor money or doing nothing,

those might arguably be the best case scenarios because the other thing that happens in the Washington Post has been talking, you know, did a very good report about this, is the other thing they do is, you know, either they effectively enter the rev share agreement with the contractors who are hiring these fucking human traffickers, or they do raids. And the product of these raids is you put, is they put the families of the kids who are doing the child labor in prison or deport them. And then they do nothing about the actual,

you know, so a lot of what's happening is just happening to contractors, right? So they'll find the contractor, the parent company, nothing will fucking happen. And the parents of these kids who also like cannot fucking survive and in a lot of cases are doing this because literally they do not have enough money to pay rent or buy food for their kids. Those people

are getting fucking sent to prison are the only people by the way. Again, the only even though all of these companies are systematically hiring children, they are getting children killed, the only people going to prison are the families of the fucking kids. The only people going to prison are the families of the fucking kids. I... None of it makes sense. And it makes me... I mean, I can't really recover from any of this episode. And I shouldn't have thought it was reality.

But I just... Oh, I don't know. It's... It doesn't feel like billionaires will ever lose, I guess, capitalism. My analysis of this is that any world that allows us to happen is intolerable and should be burned to the ground.

I agree. Oh, I agree. I think we're ready for the rapture. By that, I just mean like the sun exploding into us and everyone dying. Yeah, I'm going to read a bit more because, you know, the horror is never end. Here's in the Washington Post. The Grand Island teens had been hired to scour blood and fat from slippery, quote, kill floors using high pressure hoses, scalding water and industrial foams and assets

according to the Labor Department in federal court records. They sanitize electric knives, fat skimmers, and 190 pounds saws used to split cow carcasses according to court records. Some students, and again, when they say students, they're not talking about college students, they're talking about middle and high school students, suffered chemical burns and were so sweet deprived of to working their night shift. They dozed off in classes according to a local prosecutor on court records. When asked about the children, like the actual kids who were supposed to be, you know, the ones being saved by these by the fucking Department of Labor raids, the Department of Labor pulled a, it's not my department. And we're like, yeah,

fuck it. We don't know what happened to these kids. Hope they're okay. Have fun. And we're like, yeah, fuck it. We don't know what happened to these kids. Hope they're okay. Have fun. There's one more part of this Washington Post article that I want to read just to sort of like, I don't know. I think the big problem with all of this coverage

is that it's treating this problem as if it's new and this is sort of like a unique product of like, oh, it's a tightly remark in the pandemic. It's like, no if it's new. And this is sort of like a unique product of like, oh, it's a tight labor market in the pandemic. It was like, no, it's not. Here's to the Washington Post. We have never in my memory found the types of violations that are being found and hazardous occupations that David Wheel, a professor of social policy

and management at Brandeis University, who was the top labor official in the Obama administration. It's outrageous. Now this is bullshit. During wheels of Obama administration, there was absolutely a shit ton of migrant workers and by specifically migrant children workers doing a bunch of incredibly de-inducent hazardous work. It's just that they were mostly in agriculture.

I mean, some of them were also in slaughterhouses, right? Like some of the shit was already happening. It's just nobody paid attention to it. It's gotten worse. But again, they were also just a shit ton of kids fucking like picking tomatoes in like 110 degrees in California. That was always happening. It was always fucking happening. Obama specifically made it worse because one of the, again, one of the things about using immigrant child labor is that you like that if you commit a labor violation against someone who is undocumented and a child, what the fuck are they going to do about

it? They can't go to the government, they get deported. And Obama. Yeah, the employers know that. Let me employ. Yeah, but they know that they're 100% controlled situation. Yeah, and Obama fucking helped them do it because he deported so many people.

They go, and this fucking guy probably also too, directly, was helping literally the worst abuses of this system happen over and over and over again. They were using immigration, but one of the only other things you can notice about these stories is that if you look at the locations, right, most of the places with these not all all but a lot of the places with these are happening are very very anti-immigrant southern border states

Is your southern states of border states and the reason or or or places or some places in the Midwest like Kansas or Nebraska And a lot of the reason why this stuff happens here, right is you know if you're if you're like If you're a politician, right, is, you know, if you're, if you're like, if you're a politician, right, if, you know, and your allies are local business owners, you get, you get, you get to play this sort of like, you get, you get to play both sides of the, of the fucking spectrum, right? On the one hand, you get to, you get to keep hiring a bunch of undocumented immigrants. And on the other hand, you, you whip up this like enormous social history about them so that all these people can be more effectively disciplined and crushed. And everyone fucking knows how this game works, right?

All the people with any real power actually understand this. It's why the Justice Department or all the immigration agencies never go after the companies who hire people. They only ever go after the actual workers themselves. It's just so upsetting because like the most and their mind, like the most helpful, like useful person is the person that has like the most to lose. And they know that and use it against them for that reason. Yeah. It's just so, it's just fucked up in every possible way.

I don't know. It's also just a little silly, like you said, to just so, it's just fucked up in every possible way. I don't know. And it's also just that little silly, like you said, to just like, think this just happened. Like this is something that has clearly been building to this. You know what I mean? I think anyone with a brain can figure that out because it, this kind of intricate system doesn't just like pop up in a year or two out of nowhere. It's been building it on itself.

I don't know. Yeah, it's like, yeah, like you're definitely right. It's not just like, yeah, it's been building for ages. Like it was just it was deliberately designed by those people who like make a bunch of fucking money from it, right? They make slightly more money if they fucking force a 12-year-old to clean the floor of a slaughterhouse Then they do if they forced like a 22-year-old to do it and so they do And the last so mad. Yeah And the last thing that I want to sort of mention about this right is that a lot of these a lot of the states For the stuff that's happening a lot, the states that are passing these laws were also states that are like simultaneously passing like enormous rass of anti-trans legislation. Like as a part of this so called like protect the kids thing.

And you know, you can talk about the hypocrisy of it right. But I think the important thing to understand here is that protect the kids was always racialized. Like they don't give a shit about the kids dying and meatpy plants because they aren't white, right? They're immigrant kids who these freaks want to fucking kill anyways. And if those kids die in the job, nobody gives a shit, right? So it makes it's upsetting also because the majority of these kids, I don't want to say majority, I don't want to speak for anybody, but I feel like these kids also, they need to work in their minds. You know what I mean? Like to say majority, I don't want to speak for anybody, but I feel like these kids also

They need to work in their minds, you know what I mean? Like they're like I have no other choice. No one's helping me. This is the only option I have and it just becomes this like Staking its own tail bowl shit where it's just I don't know is there's no there's no good out for them Because no one's fucking helping them and their family is not there and they need to fucking survive. So it's the thing where it's like they're consenting to it in a in a sick way like not because they not because they're consenting to because they want to because they need to to survive and the people that are in power know that and take advantage of it. And I don't know the lack of empathy across the board is just in hum, know that and take advantage of it. And I don't know, the lack of empathy across the board is just inhumane and disgusting and I hate that.

I don't know, that's all I have other than a general expectation that like every single part of the system that produces this the entire border regime, the US labor regime, the sort of family regimes that this stuff relies on. All of it needs to fucking go and we need to do it before another kid gets fucking killed on a factory floor. Yeah. I have a hard time not feeling like it's too big and I'm too helpless and there's nothing to do, but I think stuff just raising awareness and not pretending this doesn't happen here or just starting happening.

I think that's a good step in the right direction. I don't know. I think one way to look at it is that like there, there, there have been regimes that are a lot more powerful and a lot sort of a lot more willing to kill that have been brought down and have collapsed don't exist anymore. So, you know, as bad as everything looks on any given day, right? Like people people have done this before they'll do it again and you know, at some point, we will hit a point where it's fucking too much. It will cease to be. You're right.

And our responsibility is to get everyone to that point. Yeah. I think it takes longer when the insidiousness or the evilness is more subtle. You know what I mean? Like when it's not so outright in your face, it's almost like it really takes longer to burn out. And we're just in that burning out phase. Yep. Well, glad I joined you for this.

Yeah. Yeah, this is the make it happen here. Wage war against the capitalist system and the people who kill children for money. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It could happen here as a production of CoolZone Media. For more podcasts from CoolZone Media, visit our website,

CoolZoneMedia.com or check us out on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for it could happen here, updated monthly at CoolZoneMedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. 911, what's your emergency? It's a nightmare we could never have imagined. And a killer? Who is still on the loose. In the 1980s, we were in high school losing friends, teachers, and community members. We weren't safe anywhere. Would we be next?

It was getting harder and harder to live in Mompine. Listen to the murder years on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The True Crime Podcast sacred scandal returns for a second season to investigate alleged sexual abuse at Mexico's La Luz del Mundo Mega Church. Journalist Robert Garza explores survivor stories of pure evil experiences at the hands of a self-proclaimed apostle

who is now behind bars. I remember as a little girl being groomed to be his concubine, that's how I was raised. It is not wrong if you take your clothes off for the apostle. Listen to Sacred Scandal on the IHOR radio app Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, what's up y'all? This is Eric Andreik, but I made a podcast called Bombing about absolutely tanking on stage. I tell gnarly stories and I talk to friends about their worst moments to bombing in all

sorts of ways. Bombing on stage, bombing in public, bombing in life, like the time I stole a girl's phone during a set and she dumped on stage and threw a big, hey, make a punch to my nose. Listen to bombing with Aircon Dray on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the I-Hart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. big money players network on the I-Hart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.