It Could Happen Here - Civil War 2.0 Goes Mainstream

Episode Date: December 16, 2021

The gang discusses recent mainstream news articles and polls weighting out the likelihood of a second American Civil War. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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All right, I did it, Sophie. Congrats. This is It Could Happen Here, a podcast that's begun. We talk about how things are falling apart and occasionally, when we're feeling good, how to maybe put them back together a little bit. Today, we're more talking about the growing consensus that things in the U.S. culture wars are heating up to an unacceptable level, and maybe people are going to start doing some non-culture-type wars here in the near future,

like a civil-type war here in the near future. Those of you who know me, which why would you be listening to this podcast if you don't know the earlier seasons of this exact show, know that I talk a lot about the potential of a mass civil conflict in the United States. I've been kind of trying to warn about it for a while. And today we're going to do an episode about some of the more mainstream sources that have started to kind of accept this as a possibility and get concerned about it. kind of accept this as a possibility and get concerned about it. Garrison, you've presented us with three articles, one from NBC News, one from The Independent, and one from the Brookings

Institute, all kind of fiddling around this idea that certain unnamed journalists have spent years discussing. So yeah, we're gonna to get into it, Garrison. Yeah. So the past few months we have, I've been watching to see how this idea has been slowly kind of gaining in popularity. Of course, there was like a spike

in this around like January 6th, but then stuff kind of settled down, and now we're kind of seeing it come back up again. so we had these these three pieces all published within like a month of each other um all kind of on this topic and specifically like the pieces themselves are definitely going coming at this from a more like liberal perspective but the thing that made them interesting is that they they did have a decent number of like uh of uh of polls number of polls and surveys in them

based on what types of people are thinking about this and think it's more of a possibility. One survey published on November 1st, 2021, said 18% of Americans believe that, quote-unquote, patriots might have to resort to violence to, quote, save the country. And that included 30% of Republicans, but 18% of Americans in general, 30% of Republicans. So using that very specific turn of phrase is definitely notable. And then another poll from earlier in the year found that 46% of people thought the country was somewhat or very likely to have another type of civil war. And that's the

plurality of the people polled in that because only like 43% said unlikely. So the majority of people or not the majority of people polled, but like the most common reaction was leaned on yes it is yeah i think maybe we're gonna have us a war yeah which is not great the one that uh nbc published included in their article had about like 33 of people saying no it's it's probably not going to happen 20 kind of on the maybe and and 47 leaning on yeah yeah, this is probably going to happen at some point soon. Yep. I mean, a lot of what these articles are talking about is just, like, kind of the increased threats against, like, elected officials and then increased almost, like, militancy or performative militancy of elected officials. Yeah. Types of like, you know, like performatively bringing your gun into Congress and that type

of thing. And it lays out like a list of like threats or stuff enacted against governors, congressmen, all that kind of stuff in the past, like a year mainly. Yeah. One of the things I really disagree about, the Brookings, because Brookings is the one who kind of is analyzing that big poll and talking about it has a list of reasons why we might have a civil war and a list of reasons why it's unlikely. And one of the reasons why it's unlikely is, quote, most of the organizations talking about civil war are private, not public entities. And note that when southern states seceded in 1860 they had police forces military organizations and state-sponsored militias the the right that's very most of that now yeah yeah

like i really disagree with it there's a ton of signal posting from guys like jim jordan uh madison cawthorne um gatesebert, a ton of signal posting. Gosar from elected Republican leaders, from governors, from state-level elected officials. And like regular street cops. Yeah, and like regular street cops that are like Civil War adjacent, if not directly advocating for internet scene violence. I think that that – I don think brookings uh i don't think their analysis is spot on with this i agree and i think there's just one other thing that's interesting about that which is i think it was one of those articles were arguing that it was

like well the pentagon's not particularly civil war like well the pentagon doesn't want a civil war they're not going to happen to do it but but i think it is also important to note that like like if you remember what happened last summer there's a lot of feds who are just like you know like when like yeah so so you know the the the army kind of doesn't want trump to like send the army against protesters but like you know like bortak for example like 100 was just like absolutely hyped up to just like absolutely just go disappear a bunch of people and they were very excited about that yeah yeah they love they love this stuff and it's like i don't know yeah the notion that it's less likely because it doesn't have like formal police backing is really silly because if you spend any time monitoring these type of militia groups, you know that a good portion of them are also members of some, yeah, there's a ton of connections to the

and a ton of like members in common. It's like at the Capitol riot, there were like 30 something active duty police officers involved. To say that there's not direct connections with law enforcement is nonsense. And it's true that like, our military leadership remains pretty much apolitical and very like committed to being apolitical in the sense that like in the within the like U.S. partisan context, right? Like they don't come in to prop up the Democrats or the Republicans. And I don't think that's immediately likely. But police forces in the United States are extremely politicized and have more than enough power to carry out a counterinsurgency campaign

nationwide. And as long as the U.S. military didn't step in, and why would they? Like the cops are willing and able to do the civil warring for the government. Why do you think they have all those tanks, you know? So yeah, like there is a lot of backing, at least performatively, among certain types of like right-wing politicians and of course police. But I think a lot of backing, um, at least performatively among certain types of like right-wing politicians and of course police. But I think a lot of what the politicians are trying to do is more like encourage regular folks or people in like civilian militias to just start doing violence against other elected leaders. That is, seems to be kind of like, like,

like Bobbert and that, and those types aren't, they're not like telling police to go do this. They're speaking to like regular people. Um, and I think, like, Bobbert and that and those types aren't they're not like telling police to go do this. They're speaking to like regular people. And I think one one one decent point the action the NBC piece actually puts out, it says all this kind of like divisive and more violent rhetoric and behavior displayed by and towards some of our elected officials does not necessarily mean another another civil war in terms of a military contest between states. It does not mean that it's inevitable or even probable. A more likely scenario is a turbulent era of civil disturbances, armed confrontations, standoffs, threats, assassination attempts,

and other acts of political violence. In other words, one that's a lot like the last 200 years of american history which i feel like yeah in terms of in terms of the likelihood of there being like a more formally declared kind of conflict versus just tanks and shit yeah versus just like increasingly increasingly normalizing extreme violence against uh you know quote-unquote fellow countrymen i think is is uh yeah like there's we are going to be more likely to be just moving in that direction slowly and at the point when there is like frequent enough exchanges of fire that's when we say yeah we're basically in a civil war we're just not calling it that yeah um which is you know that's the points that you, Robert, have made a lot in the past.

Yeah, I mean, and there's, I think a lot of this is just a failure of kind of imagination, an ability to accept from a group like Brookings, who I know has paid some attention to the Syrian Civil War, that like civil conflicts in the United States or in the 21st century often don't – like there's no clear regional split. Like you look at a lot of what was happening in Syria. You had cities divided up by neighborhoods between like who was in charge. That's very much what we see here. And you do see like clear regional split between urban and rural divides. here and you do see like clear regional split between urban and rural divides and it's not like they say within specific states but like i would say it's very specific in limited states

that don't have huge urban rural divides yeah um like that's that is the norm everywhere in this country that i've been um maybe it's different in fucking vermont or new hampshire but I don't trust those places. Yeah, and I guess, I think they're overly optimistic, based on kind of a fundamental misunderstanding of how these sorts of conflicts occur. That said, I don't know, like, it's one of those things, I think the number one, the number one thing you should be looking at in terms of whether or not a civil war is likely is the number of people who respond in polls with things like, yes, I think we need to use violence to restore the nation or whatever. It's not just enough to think that a civil war is likely because a lot of that's just based on people who don't want one but are paying attention to the same media as everybody else and are watching the same stuff we're watching and are like, well, this seems sketchy. I think the main indicator is the number of people who respond, yeah, I think it would be awesome to use violence as a – like in order to make America more like what I want it to be. And again, that doesn't mean we'll creep over the point.

There's a number of interesting things that have happened on kind of the – we're headed towards the Civil War side. The number one thing that I've seen recently is the use of paramilitary organizations to kind of choke local civil institutions like school boards. I see that as very concerning and as kind of prelude to the sort of armed mobilizations that you would see at localized areas in any kind of civil conflict. It's the precursors to death squads. So that's the thing that I see on the ground that worries me most in terms of the thing that I'm less certain about. Honestly, like one of the things,

they note in here in the Brookings article that like the sheer number of guns in the United States is a reason why we might have a civil war. And I agree with that entirely when you have 400 million weapons in private hands, it increases the odds that they'll be used in some sort of scale. We've also seen historic numbers of non-white people, of folks who are from marginalized communities, not just buying up weapons at unprecedented rates, but organizing with them. And I'm not really sure how to think of that. There's certainly a way, it could certainly be a very negative development, but it could also be, I think a big part of what I've seen from the right lately is the sense of impunity. And I think the feeling of being matched in arms is an end to impunity potentially. then the big question is like well what about

the police and like well if the police side with the right against you know there's there's still a number of questions there and we don't have any clean answers but um i don't know that i i i think that on the whole i'm more worried than i was two years ago when i wrote it could happen here. But it's not clean. And I think to some extent, I'm a little more worried about something like the years of lead in Italy than I am about Syria right now, if that makes sense. I will say one thing about the years of lead,

which a lot of people talk about the years of lead. So the years of lead are this kind of like roughly 10 year period in italy of i don't know mass terrorism maybe escalating political violence with yeah and significant body counts in a way that stood out from the years around it yeah and i mean you know the years of lead has the years of lead also there's there's a bunch of intelligence agencies involved there's a lot of foreign countries involved false flag bombings hundreds of people are being killed in bombings and I think there's one

absolutely crucial difference between now and the years of light so partially it's that unlike Italy we don't have 17,000 intelligence agencies operating in the US and trying to kidnap and kill the foreign prime minister but the other thing that's very important

is that unlike the Italian left and really unlike the whole global left of the 70s and 80s, there is no American left-wing terrorist tradition. The left

doesn't do suicide bombings. The left doesn't kidnap people. The modern American left just doesn't do that. And a big part of what was happening during the years of lead was that sometimes the left was doing this. A lot of times it was the state pretending to be the left carrying out bombings. And that

isn't really something that is happening right now because there's just like the like the the the left is not in a place where everyone is going we need to do armed urban guerrilla movements and yeah so that makes it harder to sort of pin things like pin actual urban guerrilla movement stuff on the left because there's just none of yeah. But I don't think – I agree. Years of left is kind of like a broad strokes comparison because what I see is more likely is what we're already witnessing on the ground with these right-wing militant groups increases and they move to the point of kidnapping and executing and potentially

in concert with law enforcement like doing stuff like in states that have issued harsh laws, you know, banning certain books. You have in a town local law enforcement and militias like go after and grab individual leftists and either kill or imprison them and defense against that. And then a number of armed conflicts, you know, as a result of that, which maybe then proceed to bombings and stuff that that's terrorism or proceed to just more kind of skirmishes that the feds have a minimal response to and local or state law enforcement kind of tacitly allows like that.

That's, that's kind of, obviously that's not a direct comparison to what happened in Italy, but of course we're a different that's, that's kind of, obviously that's not a direct comparison to what happened in Italy, but of course we're a different country, but that's kind of, that's kind of the, the kind of brush fire conflict I could see cropping up in the very near future in this country.

You know what else will start a series of armed gunfights between left and right in American towns. The products and services. The products and services. Yeah. Sponsor the podcast. They're working on it. Every day, the products and services that support this podcast

urge violence on the streets of the United States. That's the Behind the Bastards guarantee, Sophie. We're not doing Behind the Bastards. What show are we? Who are we? Anyway, here's ads. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill.

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available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. Oh, my gosh uh we're back yeah what a great ad i really nailed that transition um just absolutely bang so the next thing that i want to talk about um something that i think has some some backing behind it and something that i think is kind of more silly is that one of the reasons that this NBC piece by – what's his name? Brian Michael Jenkins made. Jesus Christ.

He says one of the reasons that we're kind of getting more okay with killing or hurting our neighbors essentially is, quote, Americans do fewer things together. Church attendance is declining. Membership in civic organizations and lodges have been decreasing for decades. PTA membership has dropped by nearly half from what it was in 1960s. dropped by nearly half from what it was in 1960s bowling leagues have almost disappeared and a shared national experience of military service disintegrated with the abolition of conscription in 1973 meanwhile self-proclaimed citizen militias driven mainly by far-right conspiracy theories have surged since 2008 especially in the past five years. So he is wrong, but he's, yes, militias have risen, but is that due to bowling leagues? Yeah, I don't think it's due to a drop in bowling leagues. I think it's due to the fact that all these guys are terminally online now,

and we're watching Fox News for 20 years before that. That is the thing, is that, like, I don't think this guy, Brian Michael Jenkins, understands how the internet intersects with extremism. No. Because he's doing this from a very, like, he's acting like we're still in the 70s. And he, like, that's not how the world works and how, like, people spend their time. No, people aren't doing bowling leagues. But yeah, a whole bunch of young men are spending – and middle-aged men are spending time online, whether that be Discord in a terrorist group chat or that be a Facebook group that's for a militia. And that's where that socialization is happening.

And because the internet rewards extremism and the hottest take, it's moving in that direction even with people who would ordinarily just have historically in the past joined bowling leagues, I guess. and militias have grown wildly. One must cause the other. And it's like, well, no, they're both, both of those things may have some causes in common. There may be similar factors that are driving both of those things, but they are not caused, like they don't necessarily, one doesn't necessarily cause the other. And if you like, again,

the smart person version of this would be to say, hey, people are doing less things together out in the world. People are reporting because you can find statistic backup for this. People seem to be lonelier than ever. People are more depressed than ever. Suicide rates have risen. And while this is happening, militias and extremist groups have grown. Perhaps there's something about these organizations that makes them particularly attractive when folks are vulnerable due to these

things. And like, let's look at, you know, the failure of our political system to confront these issues further feeds into the desire among some chunk of the populace for some sort of nihilistic cleansing violence. And again, pieces of all the pieces of this article could be could be reassembled into something with some insight, but I don't think Brian Michael Jenkins has much. I think there's also an interesting thing to note here about, because the last thing he talks about this, oh,

this is the thing that formed the common sort of national identity was a shared universal military service. And it's like, okay, the, the, the, the reason shared universal military service went away was that everyone kept murder

literally just blowing their officers up in vietnam like that and you know if you want to talk about like incredibly high levels of political polarization and like mass violence between americans i mean the army basically fighting a civil war against itself in vietnam is you know an enormously important part of this and then simultaneously the sort of right-wing vets returning home and you know yeah going louis beam and stuff like that that you know it he he's relying on this kind of mythos of of this oh there was a time when america you know it's it's basically made it make america great again but sort of like yeah that that's the thing of like liberal this type of rhetoric is actually

very similar to like the return to tradition stuff being like the solution to our extremism need to be going to church again being part of civil organizations joining bowling leagues and conscripted military service that's like

that is just the same that is very similar to like the make America Great Again return to tradition sect because those are also their goals except that they're just willing to use violence to achieve those goals whereas this guy just wants people to start doing that again I guess. I don't know. Yeah, like in terms of like military service not leading to extremism, I mean, like, Oklahoma City bombing, I don't really... There is other stuff going on there, but, like, in terms of that being, like, an example, it is very silly, because a lot of... A lot of the guys, even inside, you know,

our current, like, three percenters and stuff, a lot of them have former military service. Yeah. So that, I mean, but like, yeah, citizen militias in terms of gaining popularity,

but specifically due to, um, kind of overall distrust of the federal government and the type of socialization that being, uh, online too much, uh, results in is,

has yes, grown, grown, grown the militia movement a lot. Um, and, and I just don't see how, has, yes, grown the militia movement a lot. And I just don't see how bowling is going to solve that issue in terms of how do we get people to trust the federal government. I mean, I can think of some ways bowling could solve that issue, Garrison, but you've never

watched The Big Lebowski, so you wouldn't understand. I've not watched The Big Lebowski. So I'm kind of done with the NBC piece. I know there was some others. Fuck you, Brian Michael Jenkins. The other thing on the Brookings thing that I have a decent issue with is that one of the reasons they give for, and this is actually something that Brian Michael Jenkins also brings up with the NBC piece, is that one of the reasons they give for and and this is actually something

that brian michael jenkins also brings up with the npc piece is that one of the reasons why he they believe the civil war is not as inevitable is because there is no clear regional split like a north-south divide and they for some reason think this means that there is less likely to be civil conflict um they yeah they recognize there is an urban rule divide in most states but because there is no large kind of obvious north-south divide they think this is gonna make a civil war less likely well the map would really be a pain in the ass so it probably won't happen right like that's that's the thing they're thinking is like oh if i was gonna if i have to map this out it's gonna be too complicated when i i read that i had

flashbacks to my first trip to a war zone in ukraine where we were like taking google maps up to a certain point and then we had to use like hand-drawn notes because he was like well the the different like the different chunks of this air next like 20 acres that are owned by the separatists as opposed to the government are like you can't use google it'll send you into enemy territories because it's not a clean break because you had literally suburbs of cities fighting each other and you still do yeah like this is a this is you know i think partially this this this is a sort of peak america brain thing because you know art there's been like five ever civil wars that are broken like this and the the problem is that there's the American Civil War, and then we also fought in both Vietnam and North Korea. But, yeah, yeah.

Those weren't really civil wars. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was fighting between two halves of the country, but it was a proxy for two others, several other countries, in Korea's case. Yeah, and that's the thing that like it's the the combination of the american civil war was a very unique civil war and then the other major things that we think of as like quote-unquote civil wars were you know were basically cold war stuff and i mean you know like there are a couple other like you know i mean there have been other examples of like secessionist stuff like that it's like i mean, in any civil war, there's a lot of other countries that get involved in the U.S. Civil War.

There was a significant amount of that sort of fight. Yeah, and even in the U.S. Civil War, there were just like towns in the middle of like Confederate territory. They're like, no, fuck this. We're not going over. But people have this just like incredibly myopic view of what a civil war is. And it's like every other civil war that's been fought in the last like 50 years has been just 7,000 factions, like neighborhoods fighting each other. I don't know. It's just incredibly frustrating to watch these people not understand this. It's very America-brained, and it's very sad because I'm going to read a quote that's going to make us want to purge our ears. There are urban-rural differences within specific states, with progressives dominating the cities while conservatives reside in rural communities. But that is a far different geographic divide than when one region could wage war on another.

The lack of a distinctive or uniform geographic division limits the ability to confront other areas, organize supply chains, and mobilize the population. There can be local skirmishes between different forces, but not a situation where one state or region attacks another. Which is complete nonsense. And that's not how,

like, it's like they don't understand that guerrilla fighting exists, and they don't understand how the whole part about organizing supply chains and mobilizing the population, that is just another way to fight a war, is by exploiting that specific thing. and lack a whole bunch of resources and the fact that rural areas are isolated in a different way and lack separate resources, that is not something that makes a civil war less likely. That just makes it more complicated and makes it more of a pain in the ass.

Yeah, that just means that people will be fighting over Amazon fulfillment centers and the like. Yeah, it is ridiculous. Saying that it's far different from a geographic divide that one region could wage war on another. No, you're just saying something that is just completely wrong, and you have not studied any type of urban conflict whatsoever. Yeah, and I think there's an important thing to understand here, which is that regions, in a civil war mostly, it's not that regions wage war on each other. Yeah, it's not that regions don't do the fighting.

Yeah, like regions aren't the things that are fighting, it's the people in areas, and people can move around and people can block off access to areas. And like, it's this it's a weird, it's a super weird way to think about things. And it's the fact that if this is something that like the Brookings Institution is, if this is what they think on this topic, that's a pretty sad indicator for what a lot of people, how they, how like a lot of mainstream liberals are going to view the possibility of any type of civil conflict.

And I don't know, maybe they feel very secure in their cities, which is a weird thing. I've not felt that in years. Yeah, and I think the other thing that's very weird about this is that, so a lot of the people writing about this are kind of terrorism people, right? And the kind of terrorism, kind of insurgents people, it's weird because they used to understand this.

Like, you know, because in the 20 century and in even sort of the early 21st century like the the the sort of the sort of standard like guerrilla insurgency doctrine was you know some some some some variation on the like maoists uh fish in the sea like surround the cities with their rural areas etc etc and like and you even see versions of this you know in things that aren't quite civil wars but are kind of like what happened like the the the the water and gas wars in bolivia in the early 2000s where like you know what yeah you you have kind of an urban rural divide although they have allies in the cities but the sort of you know the the you you have a bunch of urban-rural divide. They have allies in the cities, but you have

a bunch of rural indigenous groups that literally just blockade every road in the country and then starve the cities out. This is just a thing that happened in 2005, 2006. And that's going to happen to an American city. Yeah. That is going to happen sooner than later.

Whether that be caused by accident by some type of climate natural disaster or on purpose by a militia, like, it's just a matter of time until we have to deal with this massive problem. Yeah. And it's like, I've been reading recently about Uruguay and what happened with them in, like, the 70s when their dictatorship took over. like the 70s when their dictatorship took over. And they had a left-wing group that was like very much engaged in kind of a lot of acts of poetic terrorism, like robbing banks to steal paperwork that they would then hand over to like somebody to reveal malfeasance within a company or like stealing trucks of food going to like some big wealthy Christmas party and redistributing it in poor neighborhoods.

Pretty rad stuff. big wealthy Christmas party and redistributing it in poor neighborhoods. Pretty rad stuff. And one of the ways in which the new incoming dictatorial regime cracked down on them is they deputized like 10,000 chuds and gave them guns and sent them in with the army. And I was like, yeah, I could absolutely see shit like that happening. I can absolutely see that happening. Yeah, like if there was some sort of uprising in a liberal city, there's rural areas around them filled with chuds waiting to bear change. And there is precedent for police doing that.

They have done it within our eyeshot, Garrison, like on small scales. Yeah. So I think we'll have one more break and come back and talk about a hedge fund. Oh, fuck. I love hedge funds. Let me get my hedge fund shirt out, the shirt that I wear when talking about hedge funds. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill.

Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters, to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal tales from the shadows as part of my cultura podcast network available on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast

all right i have my hedge fund shirt on um as you can all see it's a picture of ringo star fellating himself i don't know why that's my hedge fund shirt i'm sorry garrison i don't know either but i love the beach boys um anyway so thank you perfect nailed it uh. Should we talk about this hedge fund guy? Yes, I do want to talk about this hedge fund guy because this is – when someone with this much money is talking about this, one, just for fun, right? He's doing this just for shits and giggles. For funsies. Yeah, he's doing it for shits and giggles. And he wrote a book kind of on this topic, and he proposed one solution. kind of on this topic and he proposed one one solution he he he came up with one thing that'll prevent us from entering a civil war um which shows how smart these hedge fund people are yeah

um but first uh i i chris would love to i would love for you to explain who who this who this dude is okay so ray dalio isio is a hedge fund manager, and he is... He runs Bridgewater Associates, which is one of the... Allegedly, the world's largest hedge fund firm. Yeah, and it depends how you define it, but yeah, it's

a very large hedge fund. And this guy is weird by venture capital standards. Bridgewater's whole thing is that everyone in the company is constantly surveilled at all times. And anyone else in the company can look at what anyone else is doing. It's supposed to be like, oh, it's like total transparency. And what it actually means, again, is that you can look at what any of your colleagues also working at this place is doing just at their day job. You can see all their records.

You can see everything they're looking at. place is doing just fucking at their day job you can see all their records you can see everything they're looking at and the other thing that he's known for is that he doesn't trust anyone else to like run the hedge fund after he retires or dies so he's trying to build like a like a cybernetic version of his brain to keep running the hedge fund the like other hedge fund weirdos think this guy is fucking wild and it yeah he's he's a time and he runs one of the world's largest hedge funds it's great it's we it's it's amazing and good we give these people this much money to control so i will say when it comes to his actual analysis of like whether or not it's likely i don't particularly disagree

with anything yes i yeah it's it's broadly reasonable yeah it's his looking yeah for what he's just doing this because he because he thinks it's fun he has enough money he's going to survive whatever um but yeah his well he's also i mean part of why this is fairly credible is he's i mean if you're if you're good at this it means that you have one actual talent which is is judging risk um and i think he's probably pretty good at judging risk yeah so he he said that he believes there's like a high likelihood that a civil war or something resembling it will break out within the decade um 30 is the number he gives he's the number he gives and then he he he um yeah wait let's see yeah he said uh there's also he gave a quote that he says it's uh we're we're in a we're

in a uh a highrisk position right now. Yeah. And yeah, he talks about the different kind of reasons why he believes so in this book, most of which are pretty reasonable in terms of looking at a population and the various polarization between politics and culture and all this kind of stuff um but the the solution that he gives to this is that um we should make a formal judgment for quote-unquote close elections and have the losers respect the outcomes and then once that happens the order is going to be like

restored and respected and then we will avert a civil war so he he thinks that a civil war will probably be like enacted by some type of election dispute which that is actually very reasonable in terms of what happened in our last election if there's like a big if there's a big election dispute that could absolutely spark some type of conflict. But the idea that we can avert a civil war by just having an organization to judge close elections is like, but that's

not going to solve that problem. If you do that, that's not going to solve the close election problem. Even if you do it, that won't be a solution. I will say like, yeah, excuse me, credit where minor credit is due. Ray Dalio is in fact right that the difference between 2000, which is when the last time someone actually literally stole an election happened, where Bush openly rigs the election. It's incredibly obvious. There's like six ways he does this everyone knows it's happening and the reaction is everyone just

kind of shrugs because they're like oh this room court's legitimate compared to both 2016 and 2020 which yeah that's you know that's that's that's there there's been an actual break there it's just that i don't know maybe i think it's it's almost just like a been an actual break there. It's just that. I don't know, maybe I think it's almost just like a lib brain thing where it's like you think that if you have an institution that sets down rules, this this will make everything OK, because everyone will obey it. And that's just not where we are anymore. Yeah, I mean, there was just a poll that came out recently that showed like Americans trust in the military has fallen to its lowest level ever registered. And like, that was kind of the one thing left that most people felt positively about. Not to say that's even a good thing,

but just like the, there is such a complete fucking lack of faith in institutions across the spectrum in the United States. But it's like how, unless you're hiring, I don't know, fucking, no, I would say Tom Hanks, but Tom Hanks has even gotten politicized now. Even he's been politicized.

Because he believes in viruses. So yeah, there's no one they could pick to do this job that people would feel good about. If they, yeah, I mean, I'm sure if they brought Mr. Rogers back from the dead, half the country would call him a cuck. So I don't know what to, I don't know who Dalio thinks is going to get everybody on board.

Maybe Danny DeVito. Danny DeVito might be able to do it. Well, I think if we put all of our hope in Danny DeVito, that is a better solution than what any of these articles have put out. It beats the Supreme Court. It beats every other quote-unquote solution. It beats the shit out of the Supreme Court. That these articles have posited.

I mean, Bob Odenkirk brought Twitter together that one week. Maybe we could try him. You know, with respect to the Supreme Court, if you just picked 12 random people off the street, and were like, you're the new Supreme Court. I would feel fine about 12 random people off the street and we're like you're fine about 12 right yeah it'd be great no that's that's the thing it's like i am i am all for it's the term isn't it their term isn't a democracy um it's i forget the other sort of term yes of of uh almost i forget exactly but it's when a government is not composed of elected leaders composed of a

random selected a random selection of people, and they make decisions, and then the decision's over, then we get a new selection. I'm all for that model of government over almost any other. It sounds way better than what we have. Yeah.

Yeah. So that is the three pieces I want to talk about, the independent piece on the hedge fund, Brookings Institution on the Civil War, and then Brian, no, not Brian. Yes, Brian Michael Jenkins, senior advisor to the president of RAND. Brime-I-J.

Brimage, as we call him. Who wrote the thing for NBC. So, yeah, that is just in terms of people in institutions talking about this topic more generally in sometimes decent ways, oftentimes not decent ways. That is the stuff from just between the past week to month of people with big salaries talking about the Civil War. Yeah. Or in terms of the hedge fund guy, not a salary, just billions of dollars.

Yeah, just billions of dollars and thinking it's neat. I don't know. You know, every time one of these comes out, I get tagged by a bunch of people saying like, Robert, it's the thing you were talking about.

Other people are talking about it. And I don't know. I don't like that this is the thing other people are talking about that I've been talking about as opposed to mass Zeppelin transit or something more fun. Yeah. These people could dedicate their resources to something more manageable for them. And because they don't have a good grasp, especially the Brian Michael Jenkins guy has no grasp on how extremism works. And it would be better if they dedicate their resources to something else, but this is

the world we live in. It would be better if perhaps Brian Michael Jenkins dedicated his efforts and his platform at NBC to looking into Mr. Dario and whatever the fuck he's been up to. That might do more. Terrifying, man. He'd just get panamod he would

absolutely brian michael jenkins would get panamod so fucking quick all right well the panamanian motherfucker in journalism just just like not even not even downtime before that car gets bombed as he's talking on air the uh okay brian michael jenkins is 79 years old so oh it won't it wouldn't be hard to stop him yeah i'm just oh no dario that that's like a 10 minute job i'm just i'm just thinking like brian michael jenkins he's uh quote unquote an american expert on terrorism and transportation security with four decades of analysis. I mean, this is why he doesn't understand modern extremism. It's because, yeah, he's still thinking in the 70s mode. I'm sure 90% of his thoughts on terrorism are just him rehashing opinions about like Hezbollah in the 80s.

Yeah, all of his stuff is super dated. So that's – I said that previously, is that he still views terrorism as it was in the 70s. And yeah, this is why. Yeah. So that's... Great guy.

That's him. Anyway, that wraps up our show. Yeah. Watch out for... The one Brian Michael Jenkins prediction I do think will happen is that there's a decent chance we might be back in assassination territory.

Because it has been a long time since that has happened. It has been a hot minute. And definite decrease in bowling leagues. It keeps happening in the UK. Yeah, I was meaning specifically in America. Well, yeah, that's what I'm saying.

We're not that far away from them in terms of things happening. I'm kind of surprised it hasn't happened. I think it's probably just because maybe American legislators are all much more concerned about assassination because guns. So people like our elected leaders take more precautions than British ones did. I don't know. Maybe. I don't know either. Well, speaking of assassinations, you can follow us on Twitter and Instagram at HappenHerePod and CoolZoneMedia. If we go missing, it was Ray Dalio. If we go missing, it was Ray Dalio. Goodbye, everybody.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturno on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.