Chapo Trap House - UNLOCKED: 423 - Targets (5/28/20)

Episode Date: May 30, 2020

Got a lot of requests to unlock this one, so here it is: Minnesota Freedom Fund donations: https://minnesotafreedomfund.org/donate We discuss the murder of George Floyd by MPD officer Derek Chauvin, and the subsequent civil unrest in Minneapolis. Will introduces us to Dave Grossman, a former Army Ranger goon whose seminars are used to teach cops to kill instinctively and indiscriminately. Finally, we take a look at Trumps order to protect the posts. Dave Grossman’s Bulletproof Warrior training: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETf7NJOMS6Y

Hello, everybody. It's your choppo again coming at you. It's me, Matt and Felix, joining you for this episode. And this is going to be like just a bad news depressing one, because I guess like just right off the bat, we got to talk about what's going on in Minneapolis and St. Paul right now. This is, you know, about two nights now of basically an uprising against the police department in Minneapolis in response to their killing of George Floyd, which we all saw on a video. And I got to say that video, even in like a culture now where we've become completely numbed to these like wanton acts of murder and sadism done on completely helpless people by the police, this one really set a new standard for how

fucking vicious and awful it was. Just like kneeling on a guy's neck for five minutes until his voice box gets crushed and then he dies on the street. And the response to this has been, you know, I would say entirely appropriate given the fact that this keeps happening. And just a quick bit of background here. The officer who actually killed George Floyd is a guy named Derek M. Chauvin, who it's come out now has killed multiple people in uniform while working for the police department. He was involved in, let's see, he was put on leave after an inappropriate police shooting of Leroy Martinez. He shot Ira Latrell-Tolles, an unarmed black man who was 21 years old in 2008. He was one of the shooters involved

in the killing of Wayne Reyes. He was a guy who shot 16 times. A total of 42 rounds were fired at him. In 2005, he had another police brutality charge. And it just like has a record of, yeah, killing and brutalizing people in the line of duty. And like now he's lost his job for this, but we're waiting for them and the four officers to be charged with a crime. So I mean, I don't know, where do you begin with this one? I mean, Felix, I want to go to you because I feel like you have a more of a close personal connection with the city of Minneapolis and St. Paul and Minnesota. So, you know, what can you say about this? I mean, the MPD is, it almost feels silly to say these things, but like even by American

standards and especially like brutal and racist police department, Chauvin, there is a, Chauvin shot, I believe it was in 2006. He shot and killed a Native American man. Yeah, I just referenced that. By then Hennepin County district attorney, Amy Klobuchar, which is, so I thought the response to this one by not just people like Amy Klobuchar, but even conservatives has been interesting because it's not that they're going to do anything, but the video itself, as you mentioned, is so fucking unquestionably bad. What can you even say? The only guy I've seen actually defend the cop, even in the conservative sphere, is Gorka. That's literally the only guy. What did Gorka say about it? He was like, do people know the

back story here? The guy was arrested. Go back to your fucking shit, go back to your shithole, honestly, like fuck off. Please go back to your shithole. The guy, he was under arrest for writing a bad check for allegedly, for $20. Maybe you could execute somebody for that in Hungary, among with other crimes like witchcraft, but I see that as a fucking thing. Yeah, go back there. No, I mean, I do think, though, that's mostly what people are going to get from the power of the city is things like Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey's very limp dick notes app take on this, which is like, it is fucking pathetic. I mean, really what can you say, but that this is the appropriate reaction? I don't know. Did you see that video

of the guy in the full like gear, like the umbrella, gas mask, all that shit, wordlessly going into the auto zone and breaking into the camera and walking out? That was fucking weird. It's weird. Yeah, like, I'm sure there are Asian provocateurs in these, you know, in the midst of these crowds and, you know, in the midst of this uprising. But like, you know, even if that's not the case, like again, we have another round of like, Oh, is looting or okay? Or like, Oh, I agree with the protest. But like, Oh, like, once you do violence, you like, you do harm to your cause or whatever. Well, it's just like, you know, we've seen like what protest does and it's just like, they'll absorb it and it'll go away and like

the same shit will happen over and over again. And it's just like, I think this has to be understood as like a spontaneous uprising against the conditions of the police state in America. I have a new understanding of the anti looting thing. And I think it's that I saw this like some like anime guy today post like, Oh, well, white people didn't do this after remember that cop? Just fucking gun down that guy like a dog, the white guy in Dallas in a hallway. It was a whole in a hallway. And there was video of that too. And he was like, Oh, well, white people didn't do anything after this. And it's like, I realize the anti looting thing part of it is just like sure flat racism. That's most of it.

But another thing is like, just being mad at black people for actually having self respect something barely anyone else in America seems to fucking have. Yeah, it's like, how would you not see that it is an indictment on people that they didn't fucking riot after that fat pussy just gun down that father in a hallway? No, I saw that in your in your, you're, you're totally right. Like in terms of like a lot of the anger and smugness and condescension, or even if you want to just call it a riot or describe this in terms of like a, a spastic undirected outburst of violence and frustration that's unproductive, right? And like I'm certainly not describing in those service. But even if you wanted to, it's like, how much can you

put up with as an individual as a community, like just as a citizen of this country, what can they do to you? How much can they do to you before you do anything like in response? Or you break the law, do something in response to stand up for yourself in any way. And yeah, like you said, it's about dignity and self respect. Like at some point, if you're willing to put up with this over and over again, it's like you lose self respect. It is demoralizing. And I'm not saying this is like, oh, like, like this stupid easy thing where everyone's like, oh, we should all be out, like something to mask up and like smash the state or whatever. It's like, I appreciate the sentiment, but like, I'm not like condemning, oh, they burned

down a target or an auto zone, or they looted shit from it. It's like, first of all, like you're talking about like neighborhoods and communities that have been looted entirely already legally. So like, and then oh, it's, it's their communities. Well, they don't own any of these things in these communities. So like, well, you know, I actually have a quote here from James Baldwin that I think sums this up very nicely. And this is an interview he did with, I think, Esquire in 1968. You know, of course, in the shadow of the, the King assassination and American cities being roiled by similar uprisings. And Esquire asked him, how would you define somebody who smashes in the window of a television

store and takes what he wants? And Baldwin's response is, before I get to that, how would you define someone who puts a cat where he is and takes all the money out of the ghetto where he makes it? Who is looting whom? Grabbing off the TV set, he doesn't really want the TV set. He's saying, screw you. It's just judgment, by the way, on the value of the TV set. He doesn't want it. He just wants to let you know he's there. The question I'm trying to raise is a very serious question. The mass media television and all the major news agencies endlessly use that word looter. On the television, you always see black hands reaching in, you know. And the American public concludes that these savages are trying to

steal everything from us. And no one has seriously tried to get where the trouble is. After all, you're accusing a captive population who has been robbed of everything of looting. I think it's obscene. And that was in 1968. I think it exactly is true today. Yeah, no. Absolutely. Like, I don't know what else there is to say. Well, I mean, the fact that it's as true as it was said in 1968, it doesn't say a lot of... Honestly, it doesn't leave me very hopeful that any amount of protest will have an effect absent anything else, absent some larger effort, because we have the results of waiting for things to boil over when they're no longer tolerable. And it's not terribly encouraging.

And the other thing that's been going on is that since 1968 and over the last 40 years broadly of American history, crime across every category of violent crime in all parts of the country, everywhere has gone steadily down, down, down. But police departments budgets have gotten bigger and bigger and bigger and police shootings have gotten worse and worse and worse. So obviously, it's not about crime or keeping anyone safe. It's just like the majority of LA, New York, the amount of money that they spend on their police departments and the new budgets that are trying to pass now under COVID quarantine where they're slashing everything else, they're doubling down on giving all these money to the police

departments. And it's just like, at what point do we really need these people? I mean, even if you don't want to get rid of police departments entirely, could you maybe cut their budgets or something? Yeah. I mean, what other reason would there be for them to have fucking assault vehicles and all this shit unless they were supposed to be at war with the communities they're supposed to be protecting? Yeah, I know. There's no fucking reason for this.

I feel like there's no fucking reason for this unless you had complete fucking contempt for everyone that lives in the neighborhood, which, you know, they do. I think the large chunk of police department's budgets have gone into buying plus-sized tactical gear for their, their, the, the, the warriors. I saw a video of a guy on the roof of one of the precincts in Minneapolis today, who just a big boy, just a big beefy boy, essentially sitting in a lawn chair shooting beanbags of people, minimal, minimal effort. Yeah. I mean, at that point, it's like how you should kind of be mad at everyone for

not rush, like for anyone who isn't out, you should kind of be mad at for not rushing that guy. It's like, that's like, like the thing where it's like, oh yeah, well, you don't see white people doing it. It's like, yeah, if you don't see that and don't want to fucking beat the shit out of that guy, I don't know what to tell you. They could, that same cop could just come to your house and put on a fucking punisher print condom and fuck your wife and you'd thank him. After that, anyone who is, yeah.

Because a lot of white people have the implicit, often unspoken understanding that in the racial conflict, in the, in the buried racial antagonism of this country, that the cops are on their side. And so, so even if one of them gets killed in a, in a, in a bad shoot, like the guy in Arizona, there is not a sense of it being a, a grievance to a white person as a white person. It's, it's abstracted away from a specific threat to them because they don't see the police's antagonistic toward them in general. And the thing is, is that what people are going to find out more and more is that while that is true, it is only true to an extent. It's true to the extent that our comfort allows it.

When, when walls start going up and fences start going up and, and white people start realizing, oh, my, my blue-eyed matter bumper sticker isn't going to cop, isn't going to stop the sheriff from, from evicting me from my house. They're going to realize, oh, there, that isn't, that there is no, their, their relationship to me, it was entirely contingent on me being a productive citizen. And enough, enough, uh, and if things change and enough people aren't like that anymore, it's going to be a rude awakening. And I guess when I think like overall about this, like when, when this happens and there's a reaction to it by the people who are the target of this kind of violence and they see

another human being just so wantonly killed like that over like $20 and then, oh, like, oh, oh, oh, they looted a target, oh, they burned down the auto zone or whatever. I think like, again, like, of course the police violence and reaction to this is also insanely disproportionate to like any threat posed by these people. Like the, the, the gallons of tear gas and rubber bullets being fired right now is probably unthinkable to speculate about. So like the other thing is like, take it overall, the idea that like this keeps fucking happening and like almost always now it's caught on video so everyone can see it and it's like unmistakable what happens. Like when a guy who's handcuffed on his stomach on the pavement

gets shot in the back by the cop arresting him and killed, like, it's unambiguous what's going on there. And you see this shit and it's like, shouldn't, isn't the question like why, why isn't like the violence and reactions of this worse or like more widespread? It would seem to be like, again, like disproportionate to the level of violence directed at these communities or at all, us, everyone, all the time by the fucking cops and the people who support them. And I guess like the other thing is like, this is the easy like hypocritical point to make, but it really is stunning in light of like the weeks leading up to this where it's just like all of the people who will like, you know, I will die to defend

target, you know, like, and it just like, you know, hey, look, if you didn't want to get, have a cop break your neck, you shouldn't have resisted arrest and you shouldn't have broken the law in the first place. Like the reactions of these same people like a week ago, when they're not even told by the cops just by like a store, could you please wear a mask and not cough on everyone while you're shopping for groceries? They're like, no, not going to do it. I'm standing up for myself in my rights. It's just like the weird way was these people ping ping pong back and forth between like, absolute craven obsequiousness to like law enforcement and the state. And then like, flouting or just like pretending

that like everyone who's wearing a mask in public is like a sheeple and brainwashed and programmed and like, oh, you do what the government tells you, like that's because you're weak or whatever. It's just, I mean, it's like the hypocrisy is just so obvious, but like just so stifling in this case when to think about it. It's not really hypocrisy, though. I don't think that that's hypocrisy. They think that the purpose of the state is to provide them with rights and comfort and to constrain the lives of people who don't deserve the same level of rights that they have. And so there's no in their mind, there is no contradiction. And when you observe the way that the police

operate, it's hard to argue that in terms of observing reality, they're wrong. The other thing I've noticed, at least in the public responses from prominent politicians and certainly Democratic presidential candidates or whatever, Amy Klobuchar, of course, we know that yet she didn't prosecute this guy when she had the fucking chance in another shooting from 2008. Again, he kept his job, went on to kill more people for that police department. She just says, you know, my notes app, my statement on the officer involved shooting. Officer involved shooting is such an interesting phrase because it's been adapted by journalists almost unquestionably. And journalists didn't come up with that term

to describe when the police kill someone. Police departments invented that term and gave it to journalists as a explicit term of propaganda to obfuscate the reality of what in any other circumstances would be like, man kills man with gun. So it's like, okay, officer involved incident. Well, okay, how was the officer involved? You know, it's just like this bizarre, like everything is in this passive voice. But what's interesting is that, you know, going through the statements made by like prominent Democrats, it seems to me like was changed is like they'll all say things like, this is an example of systemic racism in our society that we need to fight, which I don't know, maybe they wouldn't have done 10 years ago, like they say the

structural racism or like, you know, we need to stand up like for the black lives. What none of them say is use the word police or murder. The police are obscured entirely and like, they're able to talk about it using kind of state of the art, technically correct, that you using the phrases that like reflect the attitude and philosophy of like black lives matter and structural racism or whatever. But it's just like, they're not wrong, but they're all, they're all, none of them use the word murder or police in any of their statements. And like, it's, it's easy to say, oh, like systematic racism is bad, but they're, they're leaving the cops untouched because like these are the people who are, I don't know, for the most

at the spear tip of enforcing systematic racism and then doing the actual killings of black people. And it's just like the cops are still made largely unscathed by all this or even if they're being called to be prosecuted or fired. And like these guys haven't even been charged yet. And I would imagine, given the level of attention that this has gotten largely because of the uprising or insurrection against it, I would suspect they will be charged. But the thing is, it's like, all a cop has to do is avoid saying on the stand, yeah, I killed them because I wanted to. All they have to say is that I felt my life was in danger, no matter how immobilized or vulnerable the person they did it to was handcuffed was. That's all they need to say is that I feared for

my life and it's justified. And at worst they'll like lose their pension or job. That's it. But putting what, putting someone in jail for these police shootings is like shown to be over and over again, no matter how egregious it is, almost impossible. And it's going to remain that way as long as they have, as long as that is their role in the social order is what it is. They don't make sense if they don't have that ability. And more importantly, they have now the sense of themselves sort of almost as a class in itself to prevent that from happening. Because much like the military, they are much more trusted, the police by a lot of people than anybody, any specific member of like the political class is. And we see how whenever there's a conflict between

the police force in a given area and elected officials who wins that because the people who, with the money in their pockets and people who vote most know who is more important to the maintenance of their quality of life as they want it. And it sure as hell isn't anybody who they voted for. Somebody with a gun. I saw clips of Sean Hannity talking about this last night and he was breaking, it's one of the most ghastly things that I've ever seen. He's breaking down this video and he's using his expert as a martial arts student to break down what was going on. He's like, there's a praise of martial arts. It's called choking somebody out. He's using his Krav Maga knowledge to break down the tape of

the tactics used. And it's like, motherfucker, the guy was in handcuffs. This isn't about combat. This is a guy with like a knee on someone's neck while they were fully immobilized on the fucking pavement. Fuck, guys, sorry. This is a brutal one to try to like talk about or do an episode about. But again, because it's sort of like, you know, what more can you say? Or like, we've seen this thing happen again and again and again. And like, you know, Ferguson, like that was like a, seemed like a big sea change. And then like people forget. Wait a minute. Hold on a minute. Did it? I know. I don't remember ever feeling like anything was changing after Ferguson is the thing.

Well, I mean, it was like, it became a part of like the national consciousness. Yeah. But that's what happened. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. We just, things happen and then we just become aware of them. And then we have one more shred of awareness to weave into our blanket of awareness that we carry around us to keep us warm, but it doesn't change anything. Yeah. The thing that we may not be aware about is that like at least a half dozen of like the prominent Ferguson activists, shortly thereafter or in the subsequent years have been found shot in the head in an entirely burned car. Yeah. This is weird. Or been murdered and like, and then unsolved homicides and like,

almost like textbook assassinations of like, well, gee, if I was new, the actual details of, let's say, how the police investigate a homicide, I would know to burn everything to obscure any DNA evidence that might link it to the killer. And like, I think it's like not insane to speculate that these are just straight up death squads. And like the trigger men are active duty members of these same police departments. It's the most likely thing. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I would also imagine that it's like, if they're assassinating them in the exact same manner and mutilating the body post death, the exact same manner, it's almost like they kind of want you to know, like, like a lot of things now they want you to know and want you to go insane with the fact that

you know. Well, I mean, Matt, you know, this is, you mentioned the, the, the soldier mentality that, you know, the Punisher logo, the ubiquitous use of the Punisher symbol among first soldiers and now cops in this country. And like, you know, how chilling that is in their own self iconography that like I said, they, they have it on their vest, they put a sticker on the car, they're advertising it to you openly that they, that they identify themselves with the character of the Punisher, a vigilante lunatic who murders people for like doing person, snatching a purse or whatever. And, you know, we've talked about this before, like the, this, the evolution of this, yeah, like the cops thinking of themselves as warriors rather than peace officers. And I'm not saying

like police departments were ever particularly good in this country, but this is something I wanted to bring up that like I've known about for a while and I never knew really what to do, what to make of it because of how disturbing it is. But I suppose now is a good time to bring this up. I've read a long time a while ago about this guy named Dave Grossman who is a former army ranger who has now transitioned into a very lucrative career as a consultant to police departments. And basically he travels around the country like year round and just gives like to hundreds of different police departments all over the country selling them a like a six hour seminar of what he describes as his bulletproof warrior course. And this guy is a pure psychopath. I'm going

to include a small short film in the show description. This is like just a very quick short film the New Yorker put out on their YouTube channel that contains a lot of footage of him speaking at one of these conferences or these sort of like motivational self-help seminars to basically help cops be more comfortable with killing people and using their gun in the line of duty. Once you've made the decision to take a human life, you transform creature, you're a predator. What does your predator do? They kill. Only a killer can hunt a killer. Are you emotionally, spiritually, psychologically prepared to snuff out a human life in defensive innocent lives? So I mean I'm including the video because I think it's instructive to actually hear this guy's

voice and see like the expressions on his face and how kind of manic and generally unhinged he seems but also just imagine a guy like that speaking to like a like a hotel conference room full of just like bald heads and oakleys. Just hot dog-necked, crew cut fucking pig men. And then what he's telling them is explicitly saying I am taking everything I've learned, training soldiers to be efficient killers and explicitly to program an end of a human being, to overcome their natural almost like biological revulsion to consciously taking a human life and make you into a killer, a weapon of death that you can draw, point, shoot, kill efficiently every time without hesitation. And then also like the hesitation is also morally wrong.

And then even if it's a bad shooting, you were right. If your first instinct was to kill, you were in the right most likely. So I'm just going to read a little bit here from Brian Schatz of Mother Jones followed this guy. I just did an article about it. So I just want to read a little of this. Marching around the stage in a theater in Lakeport, California, Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman tells his audience that they shouldn't go out looking for people to kill because those who need killing, the gang bangers, terrorists, and mass murderers will come to them. All they need to do is be ready. Are you prepared to kill somebody? He asked me and the small group of armed citizens who have paid $90 or more to see him. If you cannot answer

that question, you should not be carrying a gun. Two hours into his high-octane six-hour seminar, the self-described top police trainer in the nation, is just getting warmed up. Grossman, a 60-year-old former Army Ranger, whereas, okay, so I go in here, he sports a military haircut on stage or two giant easel pads, their legs taped to the floor so that they don't go crashing down whenever he hits them to punctuate his points. We fight violence. What do we fight it with? Superior violence, righteous violence. Over the past two decades, Grossman has achieved semi-celebrity status as an authority on aggression, close combat, and the psychology of killing. He literally wrote the book on killing called On Killing. His books have been translated into

several languages, and he says that they are required reading at the FBI Academy and many law enforcement academies. He's lectured at West Point and claims to have conducted trainings for every federal law enforcement agency, every branch of the armed forces, and cops in all 50 states. For more than 19 years, he's been on the road leading seminars and trainings nearly 300 days a year. So, I mean, I take him at his word that he's the top police trainer consultant in the country, but let that sink in for a minute about what he's being paid, again, by police departments with tax money to teach cops and also armed private citizens, to inculcate in them the mindset of a green beret in a war zone. Be prepared morally and intellectually to kill

without hesitation or remorse, and that your job is to take a life, and even if you take the wrong life, you were in the right in doing so. Or you can't feel too guilty about it because you are an avatar of righteous violence that's there to protect the sheep from the wolves. Obviously, cops are the biggest babies on earth, and they demand total obsequiousness and butt smooching at all times and free coffee at Dunkin' Donuts and all that shit. And if you'd ask them why they'd say it's because we risk our lives, then we'll line all that shit. But stuff like this shows that, and that approach to lethal force shows that no, they're not willing to die at all. They have not accepted the idea that their public service, their protection of people would involve taking any

risk to themselves. That's no. I'll wear a phone book thick Kevlar and shoot anyone who looks at me, even though doing that in the long run makes policing harder and undermines everything. This is a social solvent. And you're like, yeah, but then I, but I, yes, I'm willing to do that. I'm willing to destroy a city like they're doing in Minneapolis to allow a city to be destroyed on behalf because of my crimes. But then I have to do that because I have to go home. Well, I'm sorry. If you're that much of a bitch, don't keep coming cop. And then, and then people might respect you. People might respect police officers if they were actually taking a risk. If they were saying, I am helping my community and I've got, I don't know, whatever the fuck, you know, I mean,

well, you know, I know what you mean. And like, it reminds me of that fucking worm, like Ben Shapiro's comments when Trayvon Martin was killed, or he was like, this is years after he's like, happy 21st birthday to Trayvon Martin, who would have, you know, been alive today, had he not slammed the guys head into the concrete, where it's like George Zimmerman killed him because he was losing a fight that he started. So like, I had the fact that he got his head bounced off the fucking pavement by a teenager is entirely, he was the aggressor. He deserved to have that happen to him. And also, like, he wouldn't have died anyway. So he fucking killed that kid because he lost a fight that he started.

And it's just like, I'm sorry, like, if you can't, if you can't settle with your fists, then you don't have like, like fuck off. Like, again, like, you want me to respect you, but you're going to kill someone as soon as it looks like you are in any danger of getting hit in the head. Fuck off. Like, it's just, it's so gross because it's like at every point, like Zimmerman or people like him instigate a situation, which by the way, they have no authority to approach someone on the street and like ask them what they're doing there or like, detain them or whatever. He was just some fucking psycho on his own with a gun. They instigate a situation that like they are the aggressor. They are the ones doing violence.

And then if someone defends themselves or fights back or beats the shit out of them, then they're like, Oh, well, my life was in danger. So I yeah, I just killed a teenager. And I was right to do so because he was threatening my life. It's like asshole, like you were threatening his fucking life. You had the gun. You saw him on the street. You were tailing him and approached him. Like, if you had just let him be, like, you wouldn't have been in any danger. And like, also, you fucking should have been in danger, fucking psycho. And yeah, it's the same mentality here. And I was going to go on with Grossman. Grossman philosophy grew out of two decades. He says spent training soldiers to kill more

efficiently. The military has long taught its troops to kill through a process of conditioned response that's meant to override the part of the brain that asks, should I be doing this? By refining this approach, Grossman and others claim the US military boosted its kill ratio, the percentage of frontline soldiers who actually shoot to kill from between 15 and 25% during World War II to as much as 100% during the Vietnam War. Grossman takes this a step further. Rather than simply conditioning soldiers and police officers to shoot without hesitation, he teaches them to embrace their responsibility to kill. Killing's not the goal, he cautioned in a 2004 interview with Frontline,

but we all understand that killing is the likely outcome. He calls this discipline killology, the study of the destructive act. Though he spent years as a soldier, he has never killed anyone in combat. Oh my god, wait, it took that long for me to figure that out? What a shock. What a shock that this guy has been like eating off of being like I'm the Steely-eyed, like Green Beret killing machine who does motivational seminars but has never actually experienced combat myself or fired a shot in anger. What a fucking shock that like it's guys like this that have such a cavalier attitude about being a warrior and taking another person's life with a gun. And while he is a luminary to many in law enforcement, the warrior mentality he espouses

is under fire. As Black Lives Matter has exposed the prevalence of police abuses and the confrontational attitude that often sparks them, Grossman continues to insist that the cops are the ones under siege and that they must be more, not less, prepared to use force. The number of dead cops has exploded like nothing we've ever seen, he tells the armed citizens in Lakeport. This is not true. The annual number of police officers intentionally killed while on duty in the past decade is 40% lower than it was in the 1980s. If emergency medicine and body armor hadn't improved since the 1970s, Grossman claims, the number of dead cops would be eight times what it is today. It's not clear how he arrived at these figures. Last summer, after a Black man named

Philando Castile was shot and killed during a traffic stop outside Minneapolis, it was revealed that the two years earlier, the officer, Geronimo Yanez, had attended the bulletproof warrior two-day training seminar taught by Grossman and his colleague Jim Glennon. The booklet Grossman Hands Out and his civilian training contains some of the same content that cops receive. There are charts and tables on perceptual distortions in combat and combat efficiency. A section titled, Thou Shalt Not Kill? lists Bible verses that distinguish between justified killing and murder. Grossman does not tell us that oftentimes in police training the right answer is not to shoot, but he quickly pivots back to his message that right behind the police,

gun owners are frontline troops in his war. He also views the world as an almost unrecognizably dangerous place, a place where gang members seek to set records for killing cops, where a kid in every school is thinking about racking up a body count. His latest book, Assassination Generation, insists that violent video games are turning the nation's youth into mass murderers. He foresees attacks on school buses and daycare centers. Kindergarteners run about 0.5 miles an hour and get a burst of about 20 yards, and then they're done. It won't just happen with guns, but with hammers, axes, hatchets, knives, and swords. His voice jumps an octave, hacking and stabbing little kids. You don't think that they'll attack daycares? It's already

happening in China. When you hear about a daycare massacre, he shouts, tell them Grossman said it was coming. I mean, you know, you get the idea. He goes on to talk about how like literally everyone in America is going to join ISIS and like just lurking behind every door, every street corner is just like, you know, right? I mean, yeah, the only one of the only ways you can get most people to accept all this is if they're fucking terrified all the time. And again, like fucking afraid. And I know like we've talked many times before about how American society has in many ways never been shittier than it is today. But, you know, looking at just the numbers, it's also like never been safer than it is today in terms of like the

likelihood of a violent crime happening to you. Much less let alone something like a terrorist bombing or killing or something like that. Again, I just wanted to share with you guys the wonderful and terrifying career of Dave Grossman, a guy who should absolutely be behind bars as long as we're going to still have cops in prisons. People like him are, like I said, just like try to imagine how many police departments he's given this lecture to and how much they probably liked hearing what he had to say. It's funny that on that Grossman thing, that the fantasy among cops is never doesn't really seem to be a power fantasy, right? It seems to be one of a cute fear and and and almost of weakness, right? And maybe that's

where the the intersection with like a fascist mentality is, right? It's that they're so that they are in constant danger that their lives are always on the risk that every single person they see is an enemy who has up who's putting a target on their heads. And like every single traffic stop, you got to just assume that the guy is going to kill you like it is in a split second, right? I mean, I think it's a little bit more, I would say it's a little bit more complicated because obviously Felix is right. Like it's only through like a completely irrational and like insane like fear based view of the world that you can intellectually or emotionally justify this to yourself or like why there would be like a reason that you'd have to think this way or

behave this way. But on the other hand, I think it's like they want to believe that because once you do, it gives you the license to do the thing that you to justify yourself doing the thing that you are already fantasizing about doing, which I don't think it is about power, actually lording power over other people, killing them using a gun to be the good guy and to like to kill criminal scum or whatever. Right. Well, it's a mirror image of our endless war thing. It's the same playbook was used for the Cold War, is used for the Warrantiers, used for whatever we have now, which is like, oh, like in normal conditions, like a lot of people wouldn't really give a shit. They wouldn't be, they wouldn't be like, oh, we need to have a military based in

Latvia. We need to, we need to go to war for fucking Kuwait. We need to go to, we need to do, we need to contest the South China Sea for whatever fucking reason. But if you get then in the frame of mind where it's like, oh, well, then what if the communists take over the world? What if Al Qaeda has a base that they can operate out of? What if this? What if that? What if China controls all the shipping here? And the answer for a lot of those what ifs is, you know, if we weren't there, your life on average, probably not affected too much. The average person doesn't benefit all that much from endless war and the American Empire. But you get sort of people, you get people to like sort of co-sign it in the way that Americans do with

this sort of thing, which is they like not thinking about it. It's enough of a push that you can cause them to not think about it at all. And then for another percent of the population, like probably a smaller percent, the idea of a world constantly, that's a constant powder cake, ready to pop off at any minute. There's conflict everywhere. Everyone wants to kill Americans just because they're Americans. That appeals to them because yeah, they want to go overseas and as part of their coming of age, just fucking gone down someone in Afghanistan or Iraq or wherever. Because, you know, there's so many people when you have an empire, you have to have a thing that appeals to both types of people, maybe more. But I mean, I think it's a similar thing with

characterizing the domestic side in that way of being a bound of threats or opportunities to become whole as a person by killing someone. You know, what you're saying is about how like it's the same mentality that we employed to fight the Cold War and now the war on terror. And now we're seeing, you know, like police departments, like the, I don't know, the blending of these things is happening more and more openly and like just right in front, like I said, like all this punisher shit, all this tactical, like I said, plus size tactical gear that all these pigs are fucking love wearing now. It really reminds me of just what Matt and I, when we talked to Vincent Bevan's earlier this week, where he said, if you want to do a coup

and like a genocide, the way to do it is to tell everyone that the people you're gonna kill are right on the verge of doing a coup to you. And like they do that every single time. It's like, it's both an act of projection, but also it's like a very, very effective strategy for justifying it to like the broad mass of the public that like you said, Felix, just would prefer not to think about it or like isn't really committed one way or the other. But once it starts happening, if they're like, oh, well, they're doing it to the evil people who are gonna torture and kill us, even though they were like absolutely no chance of that happening, no evidence whatsoever that that's the case. But like, yeah, like I said, this is

just, it's textbook evil 101. And I think we see a lot of that same mentality in this warrior cop shit. And I guess like another thing I want to say is like, I know the Minneapolis mayor has like for a while talked about, oh, we need to get rid of this warrior cop mindset and have like more community policing or whatever. And it's just like, I don't know, like that seems sort of like an empty measure of myself like as well, because it's just like, oh, like I'll have like a nicer cop that will just sit on my neck for five minutes while I choke to death rather than one who's dressed like fucking master chief, kicking in my door. It's just, I don't know, like I mean, it's hard to like, there's a lot of things like people seem like they want to hear, but like just

overall, God, like, I'm sorry, like this shit is going to keep like it doesn't matter like who or what the cops are, like how they dress or whatever, it's just they're, they're still fucking cops and their relationship to like to you, and especially to poor, the poor communities that, you know, bear the brunt of their violence for the most part is remains the same. Yeah, they will not, nothing will change until the, the job, the job changes until, until policing is not what it has turned into until policing is not an all purpose, basically just a way to make all social problems caused by wild spread racism and income inequality go away. As long as that's the job of a police officer, that's what they're going to do. They're going to street the sweeps,

they're going to sweep the streets like Frank Castle, because what else is going to happen when, when an entire cast of people's job is to maintain a sanctity of private property and, and racial hierarchy and everything else in the face of a society that's falling apart at the seams. What, what are they going to do other than kill more and more people to maintain those, those borders? Well, again, like, it's certainly not fun to talk about, but I mean, we, we, it has to be addressed. And I guess just to close out this part, like, let's, we're going to, we're sharing the episode description of the bail fund that you can donate to for people in Minneapolis who have been arrested protesting this right now. We've,

we've supported a lot of different bail, community bail funds in the past, but like, I think this is probably the, like the easiest, most effective way of, of showing support or solidarity for the people, you know, fighting this in, in Minneapolis right now. Just any amount of money, I'm sure, will go a long way. So, look for the link for the Minneapolis bail, bail fund in the show description. Okay, moving on a slightly lighter, lighter note. Here's some good news. Donald Trump is going to get rid of mods once and for all. I'm talking, of course, about Trump's executive order targeting political bias at Twitter and Facebook. Uh, he announced this sort of like off the cuff last night that he was about to make a statement and exe, issue an executive order because he was mad

that Twitter added an, an, an addendum to his tweet about how male, male in ballots are like all fraudulent. And this is the first time Twitter did that because they've been receiving, like Mika Brzezinski has basically just been saying, please stop accusing my husband of murder Trump at Jack. Please stop him, delete his account, take these tweets away. And they're adding this kind of like this fact checking feature to Trump now. And he is very mad about it. And, uh, his response to this is, I'm reading from a news account here. It says, President Donald Trump is expected to order a review of a law that has protected Twitter, Facebook and Google from being responsible for the material posted by their users. According to a draft executive order and

a source familiar with the situation, news of the order comes after Trump threatened to shut down websites. He accused of stifling conservative voices following a dispute with Twitter after the company decided to tag Trump's tweets with about unsubstantiated claims of fraud in mail and voting with a warning prompting readers to fact check the posts. The order, a draft copy of which was seen by Reuters could change before it's finalized on Wednesday. Officials said Trump will sign an executive order on social media companies Thursday. The executive order would require the federal communications commissions to propose and clarify regulations under section 230, 230 of the communications decency act, a federal law largely exempting

online platforms from legal liability for the material their users post. Such changes could expose tech companies to more lawsuits. The order asks the FCC to examine whether actions related to the editing of content by social media companies should potentially lead to the platform forfitting its protections under section 230. Basically, Trump's going to make it illegal for you not to like your P-Pause posts on Facebook. All anyone ever wanted. All anyone ever wanted out of him. He will have finally made America great again. And the weird thing is, is Trump being on Twitter is just such like a singular, interesting thing because it causes like so much, so much weird consternation and adjective, right? Because like obviously Twitter

and all of Silicon Valley, certainly Facebook and Google are like deeply evil. And we should honestly be very skeptical of the ideas of like how much of our expression and like the news like is monitored, controlled or regulated by these companies. Because like, you know, since Trump has become an office and like everyone's panic about Russian bots or whatever, there's been this like, this big push to like have companies like Facebook or Twitter or Google act as sort of like our social conscience and sort of moderate the experience and such that like it sort of nudges people away from like stuff that will make them insane and like just tell them like, hey, just so you know, like this is the bad food. These are the bad posts. But like, hey, look at these good posts

and like look at like all of the fact checkers that have signed off on it. And unlike on one level, Trump's statements about mail-in voting is flatly untrue. And it's a pure propaganda. I mean, it's completely irresponsible and insane and wrong. But it is weird as well that like, how much people are willing to let these private companies essentially become fact checkers for the content posted on it, which I think is also very frightening to think about when you know about like the people who work for these companies. I mean, that's idiotic. They did this with Facebook. I mean, one of the most idiotic liberal things was the obsession with fucking Facebook and being convinced that there's no Facebook that win every election, which even if

that's true, what does it say about you? But they got Facebook to acquiesce and be like, yeah, well, fact check. Who did the Facebook get? But people from Daily Caller, people from the Atlantic Council. It's almost as if fact checking is a very fucking nebulous term that isn't divorced from ideology. Lo and behold, a lot of like, a lot of, a lot of things that weren't at the original purview of this got censored by it. I just, it's just strikes me as this idiotic ban. Like, looking at everything now, like looking at the condition of this country and you, your main thing is like fact checking on social media. It just strikes me as this type of delusion that you wish that was the problem, that you wish that, oh, if we could fix that, everything would

be fine. Well, even more delusional than thinking that that is one of the main problems we're facing is the fact that the solution you're seeking cannot work in the current moment. Fact checking, the appeal to an objective third party judge can only work if there's an agreed upon understanding of reality, which yeah, we used to have, at least we had one that was broadly enough agreed upon, that you could have like real, like some sort of generalized trust in certain institutions to arbitrate disputes and to accept those outcomes and to accept what their claim on truth was. That's absolutely gone. There's none. So there's no way that you could fact check anything that will do the job that you wanted to do, which is convince anyone other than people who are already convinced

that it's not true. What you want is something to point to, to change people's minds, to say, no, no, I'm right. And here's the proof. And that cannot exist anymore. That cannot happen. You can't, you cannot argue somebody out of a position that they are politically invested in now because no authority can be appealed to that anyone will agree to respect the views of. And you know, again, like this is, this is all a reaction to Trump becoming president, which is the thing that the media and like the establishment, broadly speaking, like just simply thought was impossible. And then when it happened, they had to like find an explanation for it. And I think for a lot of people, it was like, oh, the internet like lied to

everyone because of Russia. Like Russia created memes that like suppressed the vote, which is fucking absurd. It's laughable. But like also it's a crisis of the fact that like never before, as like the media as a part of our society or like an institution in it, been less trusted and like, like had less power. And like overall, the information that you get, like from like reading the New York Times or Wall Street Journal, if you based your worldview on that, I think you would have a better footing, a more informed footing than people who get there into all of their news from YouTube. But the truth is for the most part, especially if you're younger, but like it's becoming more broadly true of like almost everyone outside of, like I said,

every educated, like professional elite milieu, if you ask them like, you know, where they get their news from or who they trust, it's all just weird YouTube people and like fucking like, yeah, like online accounts, like these like nonprofessional diffuse sources. I'm saying like the majority of which are insane, untrustworthy and bad. But like, given what we know about the role of the way newspapers, TV journalism, the news broadly, like how badly that like they've misinformed and like consciously lied to the public is like, I'm not saying it's overwhelmingly a good thing that they're like, that any sort of like a professional standard for project, like presenting facts about the world as they happen has never been weaker. And like what it's being replaced with is just like pure,

I'm sorry, anything on YouTube is bad. Trump, can we get rid of YouTube entirely? Like that's forget Twitter and Facebook. I just think like, yeah, it's the YouTube videos. I would very much like the government to get rid of all of them, except unless they're like movie trailers or Felix, I guess in your case, video game frag highlights. Or I mean, where else are we going to preserve Rich Piano or Dan Quinn or Demoni sexes archives? I think that that should turn into a new oral tradition. Honestly, we should carry those in our minds and hearts and speak them to people around campfires. There are certain things in the original Demoni's video that I cannot say. Yeah, but it's just it's just this massive like sort of crisis of confidence in

that like the media, even though like there are good professional people who work for it still and in the past has like basically, you have to kind of understand the role they play in our society, which is managing democracy and our politics within a very kind of narrow framework of what is acceptable to talk about. And it's not even like, we've talked about this so many times before, like the most effective form of propaganda is just not talking about certain things. Like that's all you really have to do. Yeah. And the fact that like the void is being filled or people are finding their own sources, like, like everything now, like whether it's entertainment or news or anything like everything has become like just so individualized to these like micro

audiences and like micro re bubbles of reality that people can craft for themselves and live in constantly. And I but like, but yeah, like the the panic over like information or propaganda metastasizing on social media is I understand it, but I think it's foolish. And what's worse is I think a lot of the remedies that these people are proposing for it are like they're almost basically just calling for the FBI to take over control of Twitter and like banned accounts for being rude or like, I mean, like there are so many people on Twitter now who thinks that every single person they interact with is like either in Russia, like sitting at a desk in the like a military base typing posts out or like a computer algorithm written designed to like wind them up and spread

disinformation. Well, the thing is though, this is a news type of thing, like social media companies, these platforms, that's never really existed before. And I don't think that we have really gotten our minds, any of us, our minds around what their implications are. Because obviously, it's easy to point to conservatives who say, I want small government, but I also want their FBI to go to my grandkids house and put a gun to their head and make them click like on my fucking meme that I put on Facebook. Obviously, that's absurd, but it's because the confusion is understandable to the extent that we have this pride, these private companies that are now that have the role of public utilities. And we've not resolved that at all.

And the thing is like the chuds, like when they're confronted would be like, oh, like, you got a problem with Twitter banning you or like, well, you violated their TOS, like it's a private company, blah, blah, blah. And like, you know, to a certain extent, that's true. But when you like, especially Facebook and Google, like to the extent to which that they have become monopolies on like news, information, communication in the public, and that like as a private corporation, they're technically within their rights to ban anything. And we know for sure, like the way they put their thumb on the scale for like the news that you do see and that you don't see, and the way they direct that for their own benefit is kind of terrifying. And I'm

sorry, like the fact that they're private corporations is sort of a fig leaf. When you think about the level of control over like what are like theoretically formally like my free speech isn't violated if Facebook kicks me off the platform. And like, I don't think that's like a huge injustice. But like, how much can you like exist and interact as a person or functionally exercise freedom of expression and speech when the medium for doing that for the most part now is become a monopoly controlled by a private corporation. So, you know, my answer to this is that like Facebook, Google, all of Silicon Valley should be nationalized by the government, essentially. And then shut down. And then shut down. It's just like, just, just turn the key,

like to put the two keys in the slot, turn at the same time, shut off the Internet. No more Internet. Hopefully, President Trump, if you're listening, just end Twitter, free us from this hell that we've created for ourselves. I mean, I like all this stuff about Twitter being like the hell said or whatever. It's like, the only thing that's like really bad in and of itself with Twitter is the same problem that's been going on with the entire Internet, which is that you have immediate quantifiable success for your posts. Putting numbers on your post was the worst thing that they ever did to the fucking Internet. And that's not just Twitter. But after that, I was never

going to go away because it's addictive. They're never going to go away because it makes people use them more. But as always, the problem is the users. Yeah, if you're seeing bad posts, it's because you have bad users. It's because you yourself are probably a bad poster and you're surrounded by other fucking bad posters and none of you can craft an original thought. That's it. No, I agree. I'm like, I'm obviously halfway kidding about how I want Trump to shut down Twitter permanently. Well, Trump could make it. If Trump really wanted to, he should turn Twitter into a forum that everyone has to use. And there could be like a billion different sub forums. Like there could be the gun sub forum. There could be like the food reviews

sub forum. There could be everything, but there'd be no more numbers. Everyone would just have a join date and a post count. Those would be the only two numbers and then, you know, off to the races, no more character limits. So just read it. Basically, no, no, I would be like an old like BB board standard, not like what Reddit looks like, which I don't know what the fuck that is return to tradition is what I want. Reddit has numbers. You do have the you have the up votes. Yeah, exactly. I just wanted to interject one thing, because the time is just to release a slightly longer article about this. The the section 230 thing that he wants to strike down with something funny about this is that he basically wants to change the law to allow it to

be easier to sue the platforms because of their posts, like reduce liability protections for the platforms, which would hilariously make posts like his more of a liability for them, because they could be sued for spreading disinformation and make them stricter about regulating what people post on it, thus reducing the precious free speech more. So what I'm seeing what it's really going to end up to is there's just going to be a freaking crank line for you to call the Justice Department to complain to someone else about when liking your post. That would be another person to complain about not people not liking your post. That is my this is a concept we just working working the help phone at DOJ and then then what

happened after you memed on your soy nephew? No, actually, my dream know what this is actually a good idea. We've it's a concept we've talked about on the show before the concept of the busy box. Yeah, just create a hotline that all the cranks can just call and like just pour all of their energy and attention into but essentially it doesn't go anywhere or do anything. It's just recorded and then thrown in the trash immediately. It's like the impression that like their complaints are being heard and addressed, but it's essentially just a honeypot for antisocial antisocial knowledge of every kind. That should be for everyone like there should be a DOJ thing and it's marketed to different types of people like if you're conservative it's like is your

soy nephew getting you shadow banned and it's like you call that number or if you're like an annoying lib it's like oh are people c-lining your posts to call the FBI and it just gets everyone and I would go for it like you know that thing the tilt. What is that? There's this thing called the tilt which is like some fucking weird bullshit app that takes out of your phone but you vote on idiotic subjects. It's like who's the hotter babe Kate Upton or Megan Fox? Kate Upton obviously where is this fucking website? I need to fucking vote right now. Megan Fox. No. What the fuck? Disagree. Wrong. But it's like and you can like you just vote on a hot button social issue by like tweeting a hashtag and I think like we should just tell like probably like most Americans

that that's how you vote now. There should be like if these are really going to be public utilities most social media should just be like a way to occupy the most annoying Americans. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Overall though to Echo Felix, Hellsite? No, Heavensite. No, there's still. You know what? I see good posts. I see good posts to all the talks. I see good posts because I follow good people. Like I go to have fun, hang out with my homies, talk shit, look at some animals, have fun. Yeah, we're posting gators, monkeys. Yeah, I mean if you like are having a bad time on the Hellsite it's because you know you post like 50 tweet decors and people who post stuff like energy is a vibe and it gets 300 million

retweets and you're like, oh, the website's bad. It's like, no, you just have a terrible taste. There you go. Be interesting to see what President Trump does with some more of these executive executive orders to protect his posts. Protect at all time. Protect. It all costs the posts. Do not let down our beautiful voters uphold presidential tweet thought. That is a thought I will leave you with for today. Once again, please check out in the show description if you're interested in seeing that lunatic Dave Grossman teach cops how to more cold bloodedly shoot people who are unarmed and in their thrall. If you feel like watching that, the link will be in the show description but more importantly, check out the Minneapolis,

Minnesota bail fund and kick in whatever you can because I think that will go the longest way towards helping people out and showing a sense of solidarity with the people standing up to the sorry, nightmarish fucking conditions of law enforcement and American society. So I'll leave you with that. That's your show. We will be back with you soon as always and forever. Take it easy, guys. Bye. Bye. Bye.