It Could Happen Here - Did the Houthis Sink the USS Eisenhower?

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

Robert explains to Garrison how a chunk of the online left have convinced themselves the Houthis sunk an aircraft carrier, and what that means about the nature of reality in 2020s.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Jacqueline Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep, for those who listen to audiobooks while running errands or at the end of a busy day. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T. Connecting changes everything. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. We'll be right back. on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Call zone media. Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart.

And today, the thing that's fallen apart is our shared concept of reality, our ability to exist as a population within the same world or at least versions of the same world that that even slightly interact with each other and my guest for this episode about the breaking of reality garrison davis garrison what do you know about the uss eisenhower is that a is that is that from star trek is that uh yeah uh-huh that's the ship that they all fly around in Star Trek, the mini voyages of the starship Eisenhower. It's continuing mission.

That would be such a different show. Every episode, they're just fucking with Guatemala. Like, every single episode, Picard's just finding another way to overthrow the government of Guatemala. Yeah, no, that's like alternate universe, evil Gene Roddenberry. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, if Gene Roddenberry had been like a hardcore conservative.

Yeah. Speaking of hardcore conservatives, we are talking again about alternate realities. And the USS Eisenhower is relevant to that because it's kind of been the subject of a reality fracture recently. Just talking in terms of like things that are actually true, the USS Eisenhower is a very big aircraft carrier. It's got something like 5,000 people on its crew. It's nuclear powered. It can stay, I think, up to like 25 years. Potentially, it could stay in the field without needing to like refuel or anything like that. That's wild. Yeah, yeah. Aircraft carriers are insane things. And it is the the center of an Air Force carrier group, which is a group of I think there's something like 10 or 11 other ships

in it, a combination of like, you've got like destroyers, these little like missile ships. I think there's some submarines, probably an ice cream ship in there somewhere. That's kind of like a key thing the US.S. military does. Anyway, the Eisenhower is the ship that's out in the Gulf of Aden right now, throwing down with the Houthis. And on the 31st of last month, there was a series of attacks launched by the Eisenhower, along with some of our British allies, striking 13 Houthi targets at various locations in Yemen. This was in response to a number of attacks that the Houthis had launched recently on shipping in the region, including I think they hit a Greek ship a couple of times. The strikes came also a day after the Houthis shot down an MQ-9 Reaper drone,

which was the third downing of a Reaper drone in May. So the Houthis have been dropping Reapers pretty regularly. So anyway, all of this led to a massive series of strikes that were kind of, you know, launched from the Eisenhower on Houthi targets. Houthi rebels said that the airstrikes killed at least 16 people and wounded 35 others. I think that death toll has risen since the article, the Washington Post article I'm looking at now. And that, you know, we're going to be talking about things that are credible and not credible, the Houthis say, given the attacks launched, that death toll seems pretty credible to me, just based on other strikes that I've read about.

The Houthis launched a retaliatory strikes on the Enterprise, or at least they claim that they did. Wait, on the enterprise or at least they claim that they did oh wait on the i'm sorry on the eisenhower we did used to have an aircraft carrier named the enterprise i don't i think we've decommissioned it since i'm blaming kirk would handle that real fast he would he would not he would he would he would be fucking his way through the hoothies already he kirk would have that's uh god uh star trek is so much more fun to talk about than actual geopolitics, which are mostly depressing. Yeah. With the genocide and all.

Anyway, the Houthis claim that they launched an attack on the Eisenhower. The U.S., the DOD says that they did not. The Houthi press person stated that they hit the Eisenhower. The hit was accurate and direct. Again, there's no evidence of this whatsoever that's been posted. The story seems to have started percolating out into kind of lefty media when Houthi press people made this announcement. I think the first direct statement I found about it outside of like Houthi press resources was a Twitter account called for an online news magazine calling West Asian geopolitics called The Cradle.

I'm not wildly familiar with The Cradle. They've got something like 109,000 followers on Twitter, and they seem to mostly be, you could say, like a broadly sort of anti-imperialist left. Most of their content lately is very pro-Gaza. There's stuff like articles about Israeli organ trafficking networks in Turkey. They've got video clips of pro-Palestinian protesters getting dunks in on pro-Israel protesters at protests and stuff like that. Very standard stuff. And on the 31st, they posted a they made a post yet basically restating what the Houthis had said, although they instead of saying the Houthis made a claim that they had struck the Eisenhower, they claimed it was Yemeni armed forces. It's an easy way to tell that someone is not accurately reporting on what's

happening in Yemen, because the Houthis are actively at war with Yemeni armed forces. Like that is the actual reality of the situation on the ground over there. So this got picked up by chunks of lefty media and particularly like American lefty media. I think one of the first big accounts to take this story was a guy named Ashton Forbes. You know, Ashton, I don't think I've heard of Ashton Forbes. You know Ashton? I don't think I've heard of Ashton Forbes. This whole left media anti-imperialism bubble has just gotten so big the past six months. These are mostly accounts,

and I believe this is true for Ashton too, who they blew up in the wake of October 7th, particularly once the Israelis started launching massive strikes on Gaza. And they primarily exist within the profit ecosystem that Elon established in Twitter, right? Where if you have a verified account and you get a lot of engagements from other verified

accounts, you get a chunk of money from Twitter, right? And so all these people figured out that there's a huge appetite for reposted videos from Gaza or videos that you just claim are reposted videos from Gaza. A huge number of them are from Syria. And if they make people really angry or horrified, they'll get shared and get a ton of engagement and you will get a check, right? That's where Ashton comes out of. That's where all these guys come out of. So Ashton sees, I don't know if he picked it up directly

from the Houthi Press people. I don't know if he picked it up from that thing on the cradle, but he posts the next day breaking, and he's got- Of course, of course. I'll show you. I'll share screen, Garrison,

as you can see. He's got the two little- Does he have little sirens? Yeah, he's got the two little sirens on either side. I fucking knew it. Oh yeah. No, of course.

There's a million of this guy. This guy is all over the internet. A source has informed me that the USS Eisenhower has been sunk, all caps. Mainstream media reports from yesterday claim the ship was not hit by Houthi missiles. Social media shows conflicting reports of damage. I'm seeking corroboration on this potentially huge story. So first we see the escalation of the Houthis say, we shot at the Eisenhower and we hit it, right?

They didn't claim they'd sunk it. I think because the Houthis are like, they're not dumb. And like, that's an easy claim to disprove. Whereas you can kind of like, there's not as much live footage of this. You could kind of get away for a while with making people think maybe you damaged it a little bit, or at least you got close, you know? But a source.

A source, yes. A source from citizen journalist Ashton Forbes. Speaking truth to power. Yeah. The evidence that Forbes posts, because he says like social media shows conflicting reports of damage, is a screen grab of what looks like an aircraft carrier that's on fire. You can see a water very, very, very blurry picture as well. Yeah.

And there's there's there's a watermark. I don't know if you can see it clearly on this gear, but like that says Arabic Journal. So he clearly took it from another website. Right now, I would describe the image quality of this as cell phone camera circa 2007. That's accurate. Yeah. Roughly like 3DS camera quality. Yeah. It looks it's not even super clear to me that that's an aircraft carrier. Forbes's post obviously, you know, does not occur in a vacuum here. And it would be deeply fucked up for me to say, like, citizen journalists shouldn't exist.

vacuum here and it would be deeply fucked up for me to say like citizen journalists shouldn't exist like if someone identifies themselves as that it's a sign that they're dangerous that are that they're they're full of shit right because recent history is filled with people who call themselves citizen journalists putting out bullshit but like it's also filled with instances of citizens doing crucial journalism in the absence of credential professionals especially in gaza right now oh yeah i mean that's basically everything, right? In part because most of the journalists who have tried to report on it have been fucking murdered. But even in the US, we have the recent case of Darnella Frazier, who was the 18-year-old woman who filmed the murder of George Floyd on May 25th, 2020.

She received a Pulitzer Prize the next year for her video. However, journalism, while again, there's a lot of value in citizen journalism, journalism is also a technical trade. And there are, in fact, some things that random derps on the internet should not report on. And an attack on the Eisenhower is maybe one of them. To make a long story short, the USS Eisenhower was not sunk. It is virtually impossible for non-state forces like the Houthis with the weaponry that they currently enjoy to sink a vessel like the Eisenhower. And for a little bit of context on why that is the case, I'm going to talk about another aircraft carrier called the USS Independence. The Independence was one of many, many aircraft carriers produced by the United States to

curb-stomp the Empire of Japan during World War II. After that war, we found ourselves with way more aircraft carriers than we needed or could afford to operate indefinitely at peacetime. So we decided to do the smartest thing we could with all these extra aircraft carriers and nuke them. That was... Wait. Uh... Yes.

Yes. Well... It's classic 1946 America logic. That is true. That is true. That is true. That is. So the independence didn't brave nuclear hell hellfire alone. As part of operations crossroads,

we detonated two nuclear bombs within 1700 feet of a fleet of ships. That's pretty close to point blank range in nuclear weapons terms. 14 ships were sunk outright by these nukes, and the remainder were badly damaged. The Independence was one of the boats that remained floating, though, and it actually was towed back to San Francisco after being nuked twice. Two nukes could not sink a 1946 aircraft carrier. What are they building these things out of? They're very big. And they are, if you are attacking them above the waterline, it's really hard to sink one of these boats, right? Like, that's kind of the thing. You can lob huge missiles and hit them with huge missiles on the top of the thing.

And that can stop them from being able to launch aircraft. It can kill crew. But unless you're actually blowing a big hole in it below the waterline, you're not going to send one of these fuckers to the bottom of the ocean, right? That's just kind of physics, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so we towed the independents back to San Francisco. They actually built a radiation lab in the boat itself for a while. That's funny.

because the united states be how the united states do we filled this massive boat with concrete drums full of radioactive waste and sunk it 30 miles off the coast of california with two torpedoes that's fucking hilarious that that's that rules hell yeah brother this this country man um so again when once we started lobbing torpedoes at this fucker underneath the boat, it was not wildly hard to sink the son of a bitch. Right. And that's the reality of the situation. If the Houthis were able to get like some subs that were capable of like actually getting through, you know, the dragnet of boats that are defending the Enterprise and they could get any kind of, you know, decent sized torpedo underneath it, they might have a chance of sinking it. Photon torpedoes. Photon torpedoes.

For the Enterprise, yeah. Yes, yes, yes. Or a quantum torpedo if we've moved on to DS9, Garrison. Oh, I've not started DS9 yet. Oh, oh, it's great. It's the horniest Star Trek, Garrison, which I appreciate. Which is shocking to hear. Which is shocking to hear.

It is shockingly horny. So I want to note, while i'm talking about the impossibility of the houthis using their current methods which are basically when it comes to how they've been attacking the eisenhower they've been either flying drones at it trying to ram it with an explosive drone or launching cruise missiles at it right and all of these are basically aiming for the top of this boat because that's kind of the option that they have. I was not aware that they had like advanced submarine capabilities. They sure don't.

As far as I'm aware, they don't. Yeah. Now it is, it's worth noting, potentially it could be surprisingly easy sometimes to sink a modern aircraft carrier if you have a decent submarine. And there's evidence of this that came from a joint Franco US naval exercise off the coast of Florida in March of 2015, where basically we're doing this exercise with the French. At one point, this French submarine is part of the op for which is like opposition forces during a war game, and it sinks the Roosevelt and most of its escorts in like a simulated battle. of its escorts in like a simulated battle. And this is, you know, it's very funny because like the French military posted about this and then had to delete it because it was really embarrassing for the Navy. And it's seen as evidence by people who actually know their shit about naval power and naval

warfare is like, oh, US anti-sub interdiction tactics and technology really took a hit in the post-Cold War period. We stopped putting money into it because like we thought, well, who's going to send subs after us if the Russians are gone, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I don't mean to say that like these boats are invulnerable.

Nothing can stop the US Navy. In fact, the evidence suggests that like a modestly powerful naval power could do some serious damage to a carrier group in the right circumstances. It's just the way the Houthis, the claims people are making about how the Houthis sunk the Eisenhower is not a way in which the Eisenhower could realistically be sunk, right? Some bootleg Iranian missiles are not going to sink the most advanced carrier in the world today. Two nukes couldn't do a comparatively shitty carrier in 1946. Two nukes couldn't do a comparatively shitty carrier in 1946. Now, this is all pretty obvious to anyone who knows the first thing about modern naval warfare, but it was not obvious to our citizen journalist friend Ashton Forbes.

When numerous people pointed out to him that his claims were absurd, he replied, yeah, I wanted to hold back on this story in case it's not true. But I trust my source and the media reports stink to me. If this ends up being wrong, I'll retract. But the implications are too huge not to report. Sure. Sure. Yeah. Sure, buddy. Why not?

We're going to dig into that and the ethics of the journalism that he claims to be practicing. But first, the ethics of my journalism are that you should buy whatever these advertisers are selling. that you should buy whatever these advertisers are selling. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout?

Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko.

from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot.

Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me

in a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics

and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. So I really hate the too huge not to report justification. That's like, that's incredibly unethical journalism because like if a story is that huge. Actually, Robert, no, no, no.

I just got an update from a source that 9-11-2 just happened. Oh, wow. I have a very blurry picture. I'm going to post it up on Twitter right now. I can't verify, but this is, if true, this is groundbreaking. Literally, this is groundbreaking, literally in case of the ground. Yeah. And I know listeners, you're like,

there's no way 9-11-2 happened several days ago by the time you listened to this episode, and I haven't heard about it. I want to remind you about the film Mad Max Fury Road. When that came out, none of us were expecting another mad max movie and we got a great one and i think 9-11-2 could be the fury road of terrorism attacks real promise real promise they also could be censoring the story they may not want you to know in case you haven't heard the news doesn't want you to know that 9-11-2 already happened because it's going to destroy the market for 9-11-1 memorabilia. You know, that's... Everybody needs to read Manufacturing Consent by Chomsky.

He lays it all out! As you were saying. So, obviously, if a story is as big as this, and the sinking of the Eisenhower would be like the most significant military reversal in the 21st century, maybe? You know, I guess you could argue

like the US leaving Afghanistan, maybe, but honest, from a technological standpoint, at least, the Houthis managing to drop an aircraft carrier would be massive. And if a story is that big, you have a responsibility not to report on it until you have any reason at all to believe that it's true. So when somebody says the implications are too huge not to report on, what they mean is I wanted the clout and traffic from getting this out first, and I don't really care if it's true. Now, it happens to be quite easy to prove that the USS Eisenhower is still among the living because the captain of that boat is a poster.

His name is- Oh, God. Oh, this man posts like you wouldn't believe garrison i've never seen a commanding officer in the u.s military who posts like this man do you think reicher would be a poster i don't know reicher would be he would do a lot of dming he would be sliding into dms an awful lot like yes yes absolutely he would constantly be trying to fuck but i think the only reason he would actually post is when like something broke and he couldn't figure out how to fix it he would he would be like adding geordie constantly like yes i can't get my computer

working that makes sense so the captain of the enterprise is christopher f hill and again he's a poster for reasons that i have not bothered to look into and don't care to learn. He goes by Chowda on Twitter, like with a D-A-H. I don't know why. And within minutes of the Forbes post about, or of Forbes' post,

he himself posted videos of the bakery on board the Eisenhower, which showed no signs of being underwater. I think that was kind of his subtle way of being like, we are still making like cinnamon rolls. Like everything is fine on board this ship. In short order, internet sleuths discovered that the video clip posted by Forbes that claimed to show the Eisenhower in flames was, Garrison, do you want to guess what this was

a screenshot from? Is this a video game? It is a video game. It is a video game. It's the video game Arma 3. It's from Arma 3. Every, every time, every time, whenever this happens in the war in Ukraine to constantly, they'll be like, we've shot down, you know, a bunch of these MiG-21s or, you know, shot down this this massive Russian jet that's never been shot down before.

Every time it's Arma 3. Like every single time. Unbelievable. Yeah, like 80% of the time, fake videos of military vehicles being destroyed. It's just clips from Arma 3. Now, a brief glance into the backstory of Ashton Forbes would have made it clear that his claims were nonsense, as this write up by George Allison in the UK Defense Journal notes. Ashton Forbes, despite his self-identified role as a citizen journalist, has, I'm told, a history of posting sensational and often unverified claims, particularly about Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Oh my god!

MH370 was a commercial flight that disappeared in 2014, while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, leading to numerous conspiracy theories. Now, we don't actually know why mh370 went down i think probably the leading theory was that the pilot committed suicide but even that i don't think that there's like strong i don't think it's it's very unclear could have just been a fuck up something like it's we really don't know which is why there's so much conspiracy it could have gone in a wormhole so it could have gone into the wormhole right now forbes's belief according to i found a post by swift on security who's a popular security expert who states that forbes

believes that mh370 had secret free energy tech on it that was raptured into a wormhole by reptilians are you no yeah you actually got it right i was doing a bit i was doing you got it right garrison oh my god um swift provides an example of another one of the citizen journalists big scoops free energy announcement free energy otherwise known as over unity is 100 real the devices exist already i have been told exactly how an operational device works i signed an DA, so won't be able to disclose specifics. 100% real. That's great. I love that the people who figure out free energy would let you post about it as long

as you don't explain how it works. I like that you signed an NDA so you can't talk about it, except for this post in which you do talk about it. In which you absolutely talk about it. Classic move. Now, once Forbes' post started to gain traction, the entire ecosystem of info grifters who cropped up like mushrooms

to profit off the massacre in Gaza swung into gear. Thanks to Elon's new ownership of Twitter, being able to draw viral crowds to your content by latching onto the most discussed topics of the day is very profitable, as we discussed. And into this mix, you do have some state-funded actors. You've got people working for Iran, for Israel, for Russia, for the United States, all trying

to push their own sundry lines of propaganda using the engines of algorithmic virality. And then, of course, there are the legitimately hopeful but ill-informed. And these are the people that I have sympathy with and who I'm kind of like focusing on. These are people who are understandably numb from constant exposure to a barrage of photos and videos of war crimes. And they are desperately ready to believe in some kind of miraculous underdog victory, right? Hollywood fiction has trained us all to see that as possible.

This is being thought of by a lot of people who are just numb and broken from videos of horror as like, well, I don't know, maybe we could have our Star Wars moment, right? Maybe we've got a Luke Skywalker downing the Death Star. Now, the Houthis aren't Luke Skywalker and the Eisenhower isn't entirely the Death Star. It's like it's got shades of Death Star. It's got some Death Star DNA. It's got some Death Star DNA. It's like a mini Death Star. It's got some Death Star DNA in it, sure. Yeah. I mean, it's closer to a Star Destroyer, right? Closer to a Star Destroyer. Right, right, right. One of the posts I came across researching this

was Alden Markey, who describes himself as a counter-propagandist and researcher with a focus on Yemen. He posted a Photoshop of the Eisenhower from above with a dagger in the water beneath it. This was accompanied by the text, USS Eisenhower was just struck for the second time in 24 hours, and it had something like 2,000 likes, 250,000 views, when I came across it. Another account quote tweeted this and got nearly 5,000 likes saying, it won't happen, but it would be so fucking funny if Yemen sinks an aircraft carrier. Like, can you imagine? And I think that guy represents the more common attitude, which is this mix of ennui and desperation, right? Nothing is going to stop this massacre. It seems like that. It really feels like that, right? But wouldn't it be rad if something did? And to be realistic, I don't know that I think there's a real odds that dropping the Eisenhower

somehow would stop Netanyahu from what he's doing. I mean, maybe it would like it would certainly reduce the ability of the United States to interdict Iranian missiles coming into Israel. But I don't know that I think that it's realistic that that's going to stop Netanyahu from doing the shit that Netanyahu is doing. You can feel however you want about that. It's not irrational to be like, boy, I don't think this is real, but like, I wish it was right.

So you can feel however you want about this guy wanting, you know, thousands of US soldiers to get murdered. I get both like, I don't think that realistically anything the Houthis are doing is going to stop what Israel's doing at this point. But I also understand just desperately wanting some violence to come down on the other side of this thing after months of watching videos of the slaughter in Gaza. You know, I don't think that's- You have like Nikki Haley signing bombs that then Biden is sending over.

Like, come on, like, yeah, no, I could understand the emotional, like, draw. It doesn't speak to the best angels of our nature, right? Because you're hoping for huge amounts of human death either way. But like, I get it. And it's not irrational, right? Saying there's no way this is real, but I wish it was is not an irrational feeling, right? You can contrast that to the posts of independent journalist and news grifter Richard Medhurst with 418,000 followers who posted this on June 2nd. Yemen struck the best ship in the U.S. Navy with ballistic and cruise missiles.

The ship is fleeing and the captain of the USS Eisenhower tried to do damage control by posting a video of the deck on Twitter. But it's an old Instagram reel from 13 weeks ago left Yemen never lie. And this is just an alternate reality that they've entered into now. Yes, yes. You have departed reality in favor of one that you are crafting because it's more comforting

than the one in which nothing seems to be able to actually alter the course of violence in Gaza, right? So you're just deciding to believe in something else. Now, community notes flagged this post, actually alter the course of violence in Gaza, right? So you're just deciding to believe in something else. Now, community notes flagged this post, but it still has something like 350,000 views and more than 400,000 likes. 400,000? Or 4,000 likes, sorry. 418,000 followers, 4,000 likes on the post. Got it. I see. 4,000 likes is still a mess. It's sizable. Super, super large number.

Yeah. Medhurst has leaned hard into repeating claims that the Houthis have sunk or damaged the Eisenhower. In another post with 6,000 likes and 821,000 views, he describes the Ike as being hit with ballistic and cruise missiles and add, Yemen never lie in their press briefings, so I'm inclined to believe them. Jesus Christ. I know. press briefings, so I'm inclined to believe them. In one post, he notes that the Houthis recently shot down an MQ-9 Reaper drone, which did happen, and claims the US won't admit to that either. And I haven't run into the US denying that this happened. There's three clear cases of MQ-9s being shot down last month alone, right? We actually know a lot about this, which is part of why I don't believe

the Eisenhower shot down is the Houthis were able to prove quite readily that they had shot down the MQ-9s. I have seen no proof that the Eisenhower has been hit, right? And this isn't just a case where like the Houthis should be able to provide some actual proof if they'd done this.

The Eisenhower is a floating city with a population of thousands. There's like seven or 8,000 people, I think at least in the whole strike group. I will concede that the military could probably keep a lid on an attack against the Eisenhower and might even temporarily be able to hide the fact that it had suffered minor damage.

But you're not keeping anything significant secret for the long haul, right? Like you just, you can't keep secrets like that. There there's too many people they're going to talk to their families if the boat goes down with thousands of people on board family members are going to be like boy none of us have heard from our loved ones in a while right and also like also like the government would say something and like start like a massive batch of retaliation like it's it's not like america would be like oh quiet we just have to pretend this didn't happen yeah no they're gonna be talking about it non-stop for the past like three months we sent the eisenhower and its crew to a nice farm upstate

so why why would the houthis this is a question to ask then why would the Houthis make fake claims that are obviously fake claims about striking the Eisenhower, right? And I think it's because at this point, for a sizable chunk of people, fake Houthi attacks on U.S. assets are just as good as real ones. And I think there are people within the leadership cadres of the Houthis who know that perfectly well. It is entirely possible that the Houthis find themselves low on munitions after months of conflict with the US, and somebody smart realized, like, what if we just say we shot at them, right? It'll have the same propaganda impact, and we won't have to waste a missile, right?

No, you'll still be able to talk about it on your Los Angeles Twitch stream to your hundreds of thousands of followers. Right. The ongoing genocide, if that's what actually is happening here, right, I can see that as a reasonably cunning move. The ongoing genocide in Gaza, the other inability of protest or armed resistance to change it in any way, leads some people to a kind of mad desperation. In this desperation, the Houthis have become a symbol of hope to many people for the simple reason that they seem to be capable of taking action against the forces protecting Israel as Israel commits war crimes. Now, the reality of the situation is that the Houthis themselves have committed their share of war crimes, some of which are reminiscent of the very crimes committed by Israel. In December of 2014, the Houthis laid siege to Yemen's second city, Taiz, leading to a humanitarian catastrophe,

as this article from The Guardian lays out. Quote, Since early April, when the resistance, an alliance of local forces dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, fought off the Houthis' attempt to control the city, the militia retaliated by cutting off roads, preventing food and medical aid from getting in. Access is only allowed through a single checkpoint, dubbed the Rafah Crossing by the residents after its more famous namesake on the Egypt-Gaza border. Every morning, long queues form outside the crossing by those wanting to enter the city. Houthi militias search and confiscate medicine, cooking gas, cigarettes, bottled water, or anything more than a small shopping bag of food. In order to survive, the city has for months been relying on groups of young boys and long

trains of donkeys to bring in supplies via a long and arduous journey through the mountains. But donkeys alone can hardly fulfill the needs of the city. Medicine and food have all but disappeared from the market, and the prices of what are left have jumped in the last few months, pushing most of the population below the poverty line. Now, the comparison between Taiz and Gaza are striking, right? Like, the crossing was called Rafa, you know? Yeah, no, they literally named it after the crossing. Yeah, and you hear a lot of the same stories, like the hospitals basically were out of anything to actually treat the injured.

One doctor at one of the two functioning hospitals in the city told the Guardian, we can't do operations, we can't put people in intensive care, we can only patch wounds and tell the patient you are welcome to die here. Now, I want to be clear here, the other side in this conflict was inarguably even worse. The Saudi-led coalition using US weaponry put the whole country in a state of siege that led to catastrophic famines and situations very similar and in some cases worse than what the Houthi did to Thais, right? Like, this is the, I mean, it's war, right? This is like unspeakable suffering, compounding on unspeakable suffering, right? You've probably heard that old saying, when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back. And there's a corollary to that statement that I think is relevant to some of the fantasies

that some people on the left have about the Houthis. When you start giving yourself up to false realities, eventually you can lose yourself entirely. And we're going to talk a little bit about that. But first, lose yourself to these products. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post High is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High.

It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own

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stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Black Lit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Black Lit on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. So people like Medhurst, you know, hosts like by these guys, they aren't meant to inform people about the real world. Medhurst's fans, the people who take him seriously, about the real world. Medhurst's fans, the people who take him seriously, have departed reality in favor of a fantasy because that fantasy world is the only place in which victory feels possible.

There's a term that you and I talk about a lot, Garrison, coined by the author Robert Anton Wilson that I think is useful in dealing with situations like this, and that term is reality tunnel. The concept is complex and explanations of it tend towards long, but the basic idea is that we in the modern world are all constantly flooded by information from our senses and from the different information delivery devices that we filled our world with. In order to function, we have to triage that information to pare it away until we get to a reality that we can live inside. The fact that human beings can and perhaps inherently do this is not necessarily bad. And in fact, I might argue that without the ability to choose and flip between different

realities to change the channel, as Wilson put it, positive progress is impossible. I found this explained well in an essay on Wilson's work by Mykola Bilukonsky. Quote, we can slide between reality tunnels by consciously choosing to pay attention to things we might normally ignore. Quote, Train yourself to hear the voices of minorities, and suddenly you see racism and sexism everywhere. Now, those other reality tunnels, like, that you can key yourself in on, are always there. They always exist, right? You just had to actually unlearn the filters that you existed within in order to access them, you know? Whether or not you're tuned in doesn't mean, like, they just don't exist. Like, they're still there.

Yeah, yeah. not you're tuned in doesn't mean like they just don't exist like they're still there yeah yeah so again the concept you know the fact that people can like pick and choose which reality turn and can change the channel so to speak isn't necessarily bad and in fact is is part of you know necessary positive progress but some people don't want to hop between tunnels and explore the dazzling variety of realities that exist. They want to pick a tunnel in which they feel comfortable and then burrow so deep into it that no other realities can find them. I want you to think of one of my favorite recent Trump world grifts, right? Is these kind of this company that started putting out these like ads with an obvious AI Donald Trump or Elon Musk voice where they're like, Trump is going to change the monetary system.

And if you buy these like Trump bucks, debit card things or fake checks, he's going to like when he changes it, they'll be worth a thousand thousand times what you put in. So if you put in two or three thousand dollars worth of this, you'll be rich. He's doing this to reward his loyal fans. He's going to like he's going to fix everything and you'll finally be rich. Right. You know, you deserve finally be rich, right? You know you deserve to be rich, right? And a bunch of people bought these fake promissory notes and then went to Bank of

America to cash them in. And the bank was like, well, no, that's not- This isn't real money. This is nothing at all, right? And these people got fleeced. And one way to look at the people who got fleeced is like, well, they're dumb, right? These people are stupid. They did a stupid thing. They believed something that was obviously fake. And you can take that out of their messiah. Their break from consensus reality began years or decades earlier. And it's going to be different for every individual person. When I think about my own family members who came to believe pretty unhinged things that, you know, figures within the Republican Party or Trump himself told them, I tend to trace their break from reality back to, well, back to the day when the calming, charismatic voice of Ronald Reagan said this about the Iran-Contra scandal, a deal in which his administration gave Iran weapons in exchange for hostages. And this is Reagan. A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.

Jesus. And I think that line is an important moment in the shattering of what we might call reality, consensus reality, right? The undeniable actual truth is that Ronald Reagan and many members of his administration committed high crimes and lied about it. But Reagan's supporters, his fans, people like my parents,

loved him too much to accept this, and old Ronnie offered them a way out, ignore the facts and the evidence, and embrace the deeper truth of his heart and his best intentions. And in that moment, I think that's where a lot of Americans who are now in an even more unhinged place started burrowing down and started tunneling away from their friends and family and towards the heart of something dark.

As the years went on, the consequences of many Reagan-era economic and social policies became impossible to ignore. No wealth trickled down. Mourning did not return to America. The promise of the internet boom yielded to the dot-com bubble bursting. September 11th sobered us up from the hallucination of permanent victory after the end of the Cold War. The housing market crashed. The hideous reality of climate change became unavoidable. The promise of a bright future faded and people buried themselves deeper in fantasies to avoid a bleak and empty horizon. horizon. And all throughout this, the left prided itself on a sort of logical sobriety, a willingness to stare into the abyss, to accept the reality of our dire moment, and to propose radical solutions. Yet one by one, the different protest movements put out by the left flopped and fizzled,

promising organizers and ideological leaders were revealed as frauds or became corrupted by the system. Capitalism failed to fall or reform. And rather than confront the dire complex reality that leaves us in, increasing numbers of leftists found alternative realities, served eagerly by an alliance of conmen and paid propagandists. Now, leftists have always been just as vulnerable to vicious fantasy as conservatives. This has proven well in the last century. There's a case of a Marxist academic named Malcolm Caldwell, which I think is valuable. Depending on who you talk to about Caldwell, he's the Scottish academic. He was a college professor, apparently a pretty good economist.

apparently a pretty good economist. And he also had this weird thing for agrarian communist movements, which he thought were, he believed that there was this like massive global famine coming. And he believed that these like back to the land Marxist movements sweeping Southeast Asia were the only way forward for a lot of humanity. He was this like third worldist. A lot of his belief was kind of centering that the United States was the source of all evil in the world effectively. But this kind of led him to, he became a stan of every communist state, even the ones that were in conflict with each other. He traveled to like North Korea and came back like talking about all of the wonderful accomplishments of Juche ideology. You know, he was in love with Vietnam. He was also in love with Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. And that's kind of part of the evidence that like he had entered a reality tunnel that

had taken him away from any kind of logical reality because like Cambodia and Vietnam went to war, right? Vietnam invaded Cambodia. Like these two were not like communist fellow travelers on the same side of a conflict. Whenever this would get brought up to Caldwell, when he'd argue about Vietnam and the conflict that Vietnam was having with Cambodia, or people would try to argue with him about the realities of the Khmer Rouge system, he would just kind of shut down. Yeah, he couldn't talk about it, right? Now, eventually, Caldwell, because he's an academic, he travels to a lot of these countries.

And, you know, it's fine. He travels to the USSR. He gets a tour there. He travels to North Korea. He gets a tour there. He gets a tour at Vietnam. That's all fine. All of those states are sane states, right?

Which is not to say that, like, they don't do bad things. But they're run by people who who like, there's no benefit in us to anything bad happening to this guy who's out there in the West writing nice things about our regimes, right? Pol Pot was not sane. The Khmer Rouge was not sane. So he goes to Cambodia with two American journalists, one of whom had been in Cambodia in the years prior to the Khmer Rouge overthrow of the US-backed government

of La Nol and knew the country well. And when she got there, they had all these arguments where he was like, I think the revolution is working. You know, it's not perfect, but it needs its time. Look at all the wonderful accomplishments already. And she would point out, I have been to these cities years ago, and there's no people anymore. All of the people are gone. Something is terribly wrong. And he just couldn't listen to her. So they're there a couple of weeks,

and he gets invited to have a meeting with Pol Pot. And he has a meeting with him right after these journalists do. And he comes back from it really excited, being like, we had a great talk. He's such a smart man. You know, we talked about economics. I feel really he's invited me back next year, you know. And by the way, within like weeks of this, Vietnam invades and forces Pol Pot out of the capital, right? Like the state of the Khmer Rouge was deeply precarious at this point.

But he comes out super optimistic. And then later that night, a gunman shoots him to death and then shoots himself to death. It is really unclear to this day. It's a bit of a mystery what happened. The most likely explanation is that the Khmer Rouge wanted to pin the murder of a leftist Western academic on Vietnam to try and generate international outrage against Vietnam, who was about to invade. It's possible Vietnam killed him for, but I don't really see a benefit to Vietnam in doing that.

Again, they invade right after this. It seems like in one of the journalists who was there basically was like a Pol Pot was out of his fucking mind. Of course he would do this. There's no like, there's no trying to lay out like the rationality behind this man's actions. I think what's more interesting is Caldwell had been presented with plenty of evidence that the Khmer Rouge regime was deeply evil and violent.

And in fact, he had published right before he went over there, he published an article about like the successes of their agrarian reforms. And the Khmer Rouge government official that he cited in that paper, that's like the basis of most of his claims about how well the reforms had worked with it, like a couple of weeks before he arrived in Cambodia was tortured to death in the S-21 prison. Well, that's not a great sign. Not a great sign. Anyway, I bring this guy up because I think he's maybe the best example of the damage that you do to yourself

when you let yourself fall into these tunnels. Because Caldwell, he's not one of these gray zone guys. He didn't make a bunch of money being a stand for dictatorships. He seems to, everyone who talked, even the people who thought he was out of his mind on his opinions on the Khmer Rouge agree. He was a really nice man. He was a family man. He was a good teacher. He just completely left reality in this one thing and it led him

to oblivion. I've been thinking about a lot of similar stuff in terms of what Israel's currently doing. And there's so many people who are just vocally supportive of every single action that's being done. And there's even been attacks where I've seen people like vehemently like defend what happened. It's like, no, this was like a necessary strike. It did for all these reasons, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Even if even if someone like netanyahu then like like comes out and says like actually no this was a quote-unquote like terrible accident or whatever there will still be people defending it and like i don't know if all of these people are literally

like bloodthirsty like i i i don't know if they actually really want to see like everyone in gaza killed i'm sure there's there's maybe some people who are just bad, but I think the reality tunnel version is a lot more useful for understanding how there's so many otherwise very normal people who feel totally fine about cheering on the actions of the state of Israel right now as the death toll just gets higher and higher and higher every single day. No, it's certainly been something I've

thought about very often these past few months, as I'm sure many other people are, you know, both staring into the abyss on twitter.com, where everyone has a take. But then also, you know, if you're ever going out to any, like, if you're ever going into any of these protests there will probably be like a group of zionist counter protesters yelling something and it's it's a really tricky thing to navigate yeah it is like it because like and i guess what the scary question to me is like how do you communicate with someone who is not living in the same reality? And like, totally, I don't think you really can. I think sometimes I know sometimes because I've seen it happen. Sometimes people just get out of that alternate reality on their own, right? That does happen, thank God. But it's not like reliable that it happens. And I, I have, you know, as

someone who has been in this space of researching cults, of researching disinformation for years now, I'm not aware of any reliable ways to break people out of these, you know, these tunnels when they get themselves in. And that's the scariest thing to me, right? There's a number of people, I don't think it's huge in an electoral sense, but it's probably thousands or tens of thousands of people who now believe that the Eisenhower is either badly damaged or at the bottom of the sea, and they will keep believing that the same way that a chunk of people believe that when they look up and see clouds, every cloud they see is like poison the US government shot out into the sky using our secret planes to murder people

with fucking whatever i don't know it's anyway or the belief that literally every university in gaza has been secretly turned into a military base right yeah yeah exactly it's they're like underground tunnels it's like you know it's all of all of all of these things that it's not just like a i don't know if the switch happens immediately. I don't think it does. There may be like a tipping point. It is often a very gradual shift into different reality tunnels. And then you don't realize how far you are in one until you're like fully in it.

And then in that case, you probably don't even realize yourself. People on the outside will point out, oh, wow, this is some interesting beliefs you have suddenly fallen into. But it doesn't happen overnight. It is a slow shift in a lot of cases. And yeah, laying out, you know, quote unquote, facts and logic, often cases does not help at all

and will actually hurt. It will produce a backfire effect. That's not the case for everybody, but that is the case for a lot of people. And it's easy to discount, you know, people yelling horrible things at you at a protest. It's easy to discount people, you know, saying horrible things on Twitter. But it's more frustrating when it's like your aunt, who you like previously, like had a good relationship with. frustrating when it's like your aunt who you like previously you like had a good relationship with and yeah no i mean this this this kind of reminds me of like you know attempts at q anon deprogramming back in like 2019 where you know we had this influx of influx of uh older people

and boomers um and sometimes just like not super old people either also just like like moms in their 30s who started like believing all this stuff and cutting them off from you know contact with you or other people doesn't help obviously but it can also be really hard to maintain like a good relationship and yeah it's a weird balance of being able to provide a little bit of like compassion to someone and not completely cut them off while also maintaining your own personal boundaries it's it's a really tricky thing but in a lot of the cases of the QAnon stuff all the most successful things that I've heard about people getting out of it it did require a line like there had to be some connecting thread to the person and over time that thread

could be pulled upon and maybe the person would use that thread as like a as like a crutch when the reality so slowly started to crumble around them and it's really tricky and i i don't have any good solutions for this nobody does anyone who does say they do is also a grifter who's lying and trying to make money. Yeah, I will. I will agree with you. The closest we come to there being a solution is don't cut off ties with the person. I mean, unless you have obviously there are some things that people can come to believe and advocate for that you have to like, I'm not saying that that that line doesn't exist. Like I had someone reach out about a family member who had started to believe some conspiracy

stuff regarding extraterrestrials that was like, obviously untrue. And it worried them. And I was like, well, look, you know, you don't have to tell them that you believe them. You can say like, I don't, you know, really feel the same way you do about this, but I'm always down to talk about it. Right. Or like, you know, I'm always, you know, here to, to, to listen if you want to talk about this and let them know that like, they have a connection still, if you make sure that there's like still a way they can get out of that tunnel and back up to something that resembles reality maybe they will you know yeah i i i really wish uh robert anton wilson could have seen the 2020 era internet because i'm sure he would have had some thoughts he would have he would

have had some fascinating things to write about it. Yeah. Well, this has been an exciting tale. Yes, indeed. So, I don't know. Aircraft carrier down. We did it, Joe. Yeah, we did it, Joe. Go destroy the USS Eisenhower in your own life.

Just like the fake Koothys pretend did. It Could Happen Here is a production of cool zone media for more podcasts from cool zone media visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts you can find sources for it could happen here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com sources thanks for listening for listening. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more.

After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jacqueline Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while running errands or at the end of a busy day. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. We'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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