It Could Happen Here - Glenn Beck's 9/12 Project

Episode Date: September 12, 2022

Robert sits down with James and Mia to talk about Glenn Beck's plan to lock America into a permanent state of reaction to 9/11.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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after you have finished whatever it is that you do on 9-12 after you have finished whatever it is that you do on 9-11, either be sad or tell jokes or nothing at all, it's all fine. There's no wrong thing to do when you're thinking about a day where a really fucked up thing happened. But that's actually untrue. There is one wrong thing to do, and we're going to talk about the wrong thing uh today because most people i think think back to the day after 9-11 as oh everybody was like out of their minds with like grief and fear and saying some really fucked up shit and generating a kind of fury that acted as propulsion and justification for a lot of very, very bad things. And is not, in general, a time that we should look back on with particular pride or certainly,

what's the word I'm looking for here? Nostalgia. Everyone that is, except for Glenn Beck. Now, James, we've got James Stout here. Chris, hey Chris. What do y'all know about glenn beck because james you are this is controversial to say but i think we should rip the bandaid off british um and chris you're very young so i'm wondering how much do you know about mr beck he was like the my memory of him he was kind of like the well I don't know er is not quite the

right word but he was like he was like like the guy in sort of like right-wing shithead like punditry for a while my memory of him he he was like he was like a slightly more put together Alex Jones like he had like the weird pin boards and shit and like yeah is this the right guy yeah he's alex jones with a budget in terms of kind of the space he fills um james did you know did you catch much of him not really so my engagement with glenn beck is mostly through like teaching american history classes and trying to explain like the explosion in lies and bullshit and hate that immediately follows 9-11 yeah and so like yeah no i've never really heard his stuff yeah glenn beck he's he's doing radio shit and stuff before 9-11 by the time he actually comes on the scene it's a

few years after 9-11 and he gets a show on fox News. And Glenn is, you know, I watched him every night. My parents always watched him. My dad considered him to be like a really good historian, which is bleak. A lot, but he was, he was, he was a unique sounding figure. So when Glenn Beck comes onto the stage, right, the biggest dude in right-wing media is still Rush Limbaugh. But Rush is has kind of taken a backseat in the last couple of years, especially right after 9-11 to guys like Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly, you know, and those are they are kind of like they are powerhouses in right wing media. And then you've got well, those guys are on TV. You've got this cast of people who are like bargain basement discount brush limbaugh's on the radio that are all kind of waiting in the wings for their chance to be the next big tv hero um and those guys include people like um

like glenn beck and also folks like michael savage um there's a couple of a lot of maniacs that you probably have not heard of that we don't need to dredge up, but Glenn Beck kind of sails out of the fever swamps of the right-wing media and gets a fucking TV show on Fox News. And in very short order, he is the biggest fucking thing on the network. Fox News is the most popular network in the country, and Glenn Beck is their number one host. In 2009, he's pulling in something like 3 million viewers a night. And yeah, he's very, very influential. And this is the point in time. In 2009, by the way, the other thing that's happened

that's big in right-wing media circles is Barack Obama has been elected president. Yeah. Birtherism. Yeah, you've got birtherism happening but in general i think one good way to think about it is that 9-11 super charges the right but in a very like populist way in a because there's this expectation like we talked about in the last episode this expectation that people are coming back to god because there's been a big disaster we're going to war and war always benefits, you know, the conservatives and the, you know, the party, like we're going to win this war and

that's going to be huge for us. And you also have like just this sense, because Bush becomes the most popular president anyone can remember having, that the tight of history is with conservatism, you know, in the immediate wake of 9-11. And then that all goes to shit because conservatives have terrible ideas for everything. Yeah. And they launched two disastrous wars. By 2009, there's not a lot of people who are going to, like, admit in public, no, I think both those wars were good ideas that were handled well, right?

Like, you know, even the people who were real bullish about that stuff are like, well, you know, they didn't do this right or that right right or it's impossible to win in that part of the world. And, you know, that's the I heard different versions of that from from different family members and stuff. But there's this this real sense of aggrievement. of Bush, like it's kind of taken for granted because of how disastrous his presidency had been, that he was not, you know, it was not going to be a Republican who won that election. But the fact that it is Barack Obama, a black guy, they lose their goddamn minds. I think they'd been ready for, I think even they would have been fine with Hillary Clinton. Obviously, they would have like, gone nuts on her like they did on Bill. But like, I think they would have, I don't think that would have caused them to go crazy the way that Obama did. It is not wrong to compare the impact to

9-11 in a lot of ways, because it's this massive shock that shakes the center of their world, that they view as an attack, as an assault on white, middle-class Americans. And the shockwaves of that, I mean, we're still dealing with them. But one of the things that's happening here is that after 9-11, they had this sense that history is with us, momentum is with us. And after Obama gets elected, you see the conservative movement get much more insular and much more conspiratorial and much more focused on like grievance and anger and revenge because they know they're nothing's going to bring back the people. So there's there's kind of nothing but but vengeance.

the guy who's going to tap most effectively into this feeling, this feeling of fear and this need to feel like you were right after 9-11, when it felt like everything was surging forward in the right's direction. And so in 2009, he launches what he calls the We Surround Them campaign. Now, the we in this, I think, is supposed to be conservatives and them is the government. But I think you can assume other, you know, if you think about the urban rural divide in this country, there's another meaning to that sort of thing. Now, this is a series of segments and specials on Beck's show that grew very popular. It's so popular, in fact, that a lot of local right-wing organizations start hosting viewing parties. And this becomes like the earliest stirrings of the Tea Party movement, right?

All of these right-wing radio stations and stuff, these local talk radio stations and other organizations are holding viewing parties to watch Glenn Beck talk about, you know, do his We Surround Them act. And I'm going to play a clip for you now from one of these viewing parties. We're going to play a couple of clips. This is from one filmed by a talk radio station in Fort Wayne, Georgia. And yeah, it's something else. All right. So I want to play this for you. I think it's a fascinating artifact. And how the radio host chooses to introduce the event is noteworthy, as is the man's appearance. Yeah. With 600 sick freaks watching glenn beck on fox news for 912 project it's amazing so what what it's interesting to me i i think it's it's kind of worth going over a couple of things there because that's that doesn't seem like a lot but the fact that he he describes the guy the people in there

as sick freaks and and and then like we're sick freaks, but like kind of taking pride in that that's what he assumes liberals would call them for watching Glenn Beck. You can see a shade in this of a lot of liberals, because they're dumb, were taken by surprise when like Hillary Clinton called Trump supporters a basket of deplorables and they immediately adopted that name for themselves.

No, again, you see the stirrings of it here, right? Like this is what the movement's turned into. You're taking pride in the fact that you're outnumbered and and despised also the 912 project i'm i'm intrigued oh yes that's that is that is coming we're we're building to that cool um so anyway we get some rock and guitar licks uh just just some some of the best pre-loaded rights-free guitar music I've ever heard. And then we pan into this very full conference room. There's like 600 fucking people in this thing. And they are, as far as I can tell, all white.

It is certain that the only people they talk to when they do like, because the camera goes around to get people's statements on the event, the only people who are featured on camera are white. Like 100% of them. And I'm going to play a clip from that now. I'm glad you're doing this.

I'd like to get our constitution back. I love you for doing it. We're all behind you. Thank you. Hi Glenn. We are Jackie and Bill Betker. We're from Angle, Indiana.

And we would like to thank you that you're helping us, we the people, to take back our America. Thanks. You're the man, Glenn. What you're doing is great for America. You're an encouragement to all of us

who are fed up with the federal government. Now, it's impossible. I know. I have not seen since i was a child james you might die yeah there are a couple of extinct kinds of white guy in that video the very last of them died to covet when they cut a hole in the middle of their mask and went to a Luby's. It's Mr. Now, here's the thing. I want to acknowledge something that is impossible to deny,

which is that the fact that we are laughing at them in this way is part of why they got so angry and put Trump in office, right? Part of why liberal tears is a thing. Part of why there's so much focus on this desire of hurting the enemy um but also they just all look like impossibly american like like like yeah these are the people i used to see in barcelona from a hundred yards away and people would be like how do you know an american and like my friends would be like how do you know in america and like my friends would be like first of all you've come dressed as a fucking tree and secondly like look at yourself yeah and this look these are some of the people who raised me are are not you know the the i grew up around these people i grew

up with these people i am i am of these people um i think i wear better shirts I've not seen you touch the tree but it is like you see in this these people who feel like and that's kind of the thing they're communicating something has gone wrong with the country and the thing that's gone wrong is they are looking out and people don't look

like them and in fact people are looking at them like they look weird and people are making fun of like they look weird and people are making fun of their ways and their customs and this has taken them by surprise and they're extremely angry about it and seeing a black man as president which is the least anyone could look like them right barack obama many flaws 2009 there was not many cooler looking dudes than barack obama like and that is, yeah. You have to understand, like the bar is so low here

that like a reasonably well-dressed person is like dropping a nuclear weapon on like six cavemen. Yeah. It is, yeah, it is chaotic. So the show ends with Beck because they're watching Glenn Beck on a fucking projector and it ends with him near tears. He would cry on his show constantly, telling everybody there that they were all going to meet back together in six months to find some ways in which they'd managed to add some 9-12 energy to their lives.

And we'll get to this more. But the thing he's saying is that the day after 9-11, we were the best version of ourselves as a country. Everyone was so godly and so loving and so united. And that's the thing that we need to get to deal with the horror of Barack Obama being the president. And obviously the other thing happening, I shouldn't, I don't want to be unfair here. It's not just that they're scared about Barack Obama. This is 2009. The economy has just completely shat a fucking brick.

The housing market is through the goddamn floor. Some actually scary things are happening too. It's just that they're kind of grafting all of them onto the specter that is obama you know um anyway uh yeah so after this we pan out to widespread applause in this very full room and then we cut to interviews this time i know everyone's going to be really excited here there's a baby oh it's pretty cute child it's a pretty cute baby the youngest glenn beck fan this child has my reaction to this it's so funny it's so funny look at this let's get this baby's statement just shine it blind it with a light until it weeps yeah uh that's that's the

good stuff okay so this this video has paused on a freeze frame of a guy in a suit that they talked to this guy they call him the best i'll just play it i will i will just play i wasn't planning to play this but i will play it sir you're just play. I wasn't planning to play this, but I will play it. Sir, you're the best trust guy here. Did we have a good time today? Yeah, absolutely. What did you think of the presentation? I thought it was nice.

It was nice to get together with a lot of people. I had a great turnout. And I know that so many people still care. No, that guy. Okay, that exact kind of person was like the political class of like the town i grew up in like these are the people who were like like this is the guy yeah yeah like the thing the things they get up to were like like there was a guy who was taking money from the sheriff's department to try to abolish the police so that he could install the sheriff's department as the only law enforcement

like division in this town while he tried to sell like oh god that that is the kind of person i like he has he has strong strong republican city comptroller energy yeah for like a town for like a town of 13 000 people yeah he's dressed much like ricky gervais dressed in the like original office yeah dump dumpy i mean he is literally literally the guy Ricky Gervais is making fun of. Yes. Yeah, he is. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill.

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. so Beck paired his message of government accountability as he framed it with and this is what we're talking about the 912 project which follows we surround them with nine principles and 12 values which if followed would help bring your heart back to the mythical nine 12, this moment in which America was, was beautiful. This, this we've gone from the fifties, like there's this, there's this 20 year, 15, 20

year golden era to like, we had one great day. And if we could just get back to that, everything will be fine. Um, so here's, here's the nine value or nine principles. Sorry. It's nine principles and 12 values. I want you to hold me accountable if I fuck this up in the future. The nine principles are, number one, America is good. Number two, I believe in God and he is the center of my life. Number three, I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday number four the family is sacred my spouse and i are the ultimate authority not the government and i say this a lot but in the roman empire the the father of the family used to be able to execute his wife and children and you're

a fool if you think that's not what these people want things to be like um well and they're slaves too that's also in a very important yeah and the slaves are a critical aspect of this yes uh number five if you break the law you pay the penalty justice is blind and no one is above it this is by the way confusingly a reference to all the people who lost their homes in the housing crash um that's what he's talking about that they didn't they didn't you know you can't like bail people out um Number six, I have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results. Number seven, I work hard for what I have, and I will share it with who I want to. Government

cannot force me to be charitable. Number eight, it is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion. And number nine, the government works for me. I do not answer to them. They answer to me. Now, that's fun. There's some interesting things there, including the government can't force me to be charitable. You know, I will, which like, the side of that that is something that actually happened on 9-12 is a bunch of people showed up and volunteered to like at great personal cost because many of them got sick and died to help pull bodies out of the rubble and try to save people right and that the government literally did not need to tell people to do that because a bunch of cops actually refused to go do anything at all yeah and and the like the the government the government knew about

like like the when the government did do something it was they put they put a bunch of firefighters like inside of the range of what's the dust was toxic and then just fucking got them killed yeah which and then spent the next 50 hour we had to have john fucking stewart fight for them to get some kind of recompense from the federal government which credit where it's due is a legitimately cool thing that he helped do but like why did it fall upon the the daily show guy to ensure that the guy who's doing transphobic bits at the same time yeah yeah like it's not didn't ted cruz vote against health care benefits for these people oh yeah yeah absolutely which again it's very funny that like the government can't force me to to to to be

charitable it's like well what that actually ends with is people actually volunteering and risking their lives and then the government the conservatives in the government callously voting to let them die in agony because like well why should i have to pay all you did was rescue people during our country's darkest hour why should i have to pay like it's this it's amazing shit um now that i'm sure you're curious about those 12 values they're really boring like it's boy it's like boy scout shit it's like honesty reverence thrift courage like you know it's not worth focusing on the thing i've this entire time i think i've been thinking about this is the exact naming scheme that like like if you

just walked up to someone on the street and like them, what are the nine principles and 12 values? This sounds exactly like what a mid-level Chinese bureaucrat would name their campaign to make sure that water restoration is done properly. Like it is the exact naming scheme of like, like campaign style stuff and like fucking like post post Maoist China. Yeah. There's a lot to say about that and about Glenn Beck, but you know, so I got that list of 12 principles from glennbeck.com. What I find interesting is that the principles

as are up on his website right now because this is a thing he still gets into every now and again are somewhat different from the ones that he debuted on the episode of his show in which he introduced the 912 project and i found the the way he worded 0.8 0.8 is it's not un-american for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion i found the way he actually worded that in the show very interesting and i want to play that for you now because it's it's not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion. I found the way he actually worded that in the show very interesting. And I want to play that for you now because it's quite a bit different. Do you agree with this? It's not un-American for anyone to disagree with my opinion.

But my opinion or others' opinions may be anti-American. Anti-American rhetoric would be anything that's destructive to the Constitution and our country as the founders understood it. Unless you want to change that. There it is. Yeah, there we go. There we go. That's the real good grievance. Yeah, I respect your right to say

anything unless you're disrespecting the founders, of course. Yeah, in which case SWAT teams will commence immediately, etc., etc. We are readying the lynch mobs. Now, after In which case, yeah, like SWAT teams will commence immediately, et cetera, et cetera. We are readying the lynch mobs. Now, after introducing those principles, he asks his audience to mail him personal photographs so he can put them together into a big We Surround Them graphic, which you can find if you really want to.

Yeah, if you want to get an idea of the people who are were listening to glenn beck that'll give it to you uh now here's what happens immediately after he gives the email address for people to send this to calm all right the climate change people are pulling a page from nazis what are your kids learning at school school perfect moment in american television yeah it's it's really incredible right it's also it's also things like you couldn't do this anymore not because you not not not actually because you can't say that about climate change but because if you tried to say that about the hitler youth people would get mad at you oh yeah no yeah you'll get in trouble oh yeah the hitler youth people will get mad at you oh yeah no yeah you'll get in trouble oh yeah the hitler youth defenders will be uh they were very very pro-environment i can hear tucker carlson saying that yeah it's it's i just want to share with everyone that uh man by number five by

bob the builder hit the uk number one spot on september 12th 2001 wow what yes yeah yeah you know what you know what james never forget god and the queen was still alive then she must have loved mambo number five i imagine i bet there was a little bit of monica by her side a little bit above the builder and the queen a little bit of all she needed um okay get it died very sad so the the 912 project as it kind of grew out of the we surround them campaign if you kind of i don't know i found it written online i can't exactly confirm this but it seems like it kind of started um when beck took a call on his talk radio show and this is a little bit a couple of years earlier from a guy named ed in new haven connecticut who expressed feeling outnumbered as a conservative on the american political stage right and that's

that's really like what the the all of this kind of grew out of it's this response to the feeling like outnumbered um and i think that's an important thing to understand if you're trying to get to like the thing that the thing that they want to go back to when they talk about wanting to go back to 9-12 isn't anything to do with the actual terrorist attack. It's the fact that everyone was so frightened that they unthinkingly that they unthinkingly submitted to the right wing that was in power at the time. Right. Yeah. Like that's what 9-12 is to them. Yeah. Like it was it was the last time conservatives were able to, like, effectively cancel, like, mass cult. Like, the only time cancel culture has ever been real was, like, the Dixie Chicks. And they could just do that.

Like, if you didn't start all of your concerts. Like, if, like, Miley Cyrus didn't go on stage and, like, say something about the troops at the beginning of a concert, like they would just destroy you and you would never be heard from again. Yeah. Yeah, it was it was like legitimately scary to not be unthinkingly pro-America and like wildly so. And and that's what they want to get back to. Right. Is the fear of actually questioning conservative hegemony. of actually questioning conservative hegemony.

So I want to play a clip from the episode in which Glenn Beck first introduces his 9-12 project to his audience of millions on March 15th, 2009. Here's how this introduction goes. Two, one, back. Hello, America. They're waiting. I'm backstage right now at Fox. i'm getting ready to show you that you are not alone this uh this is your country you're still in control but it seems today like nobody

gets it now that is a fascinatingly blatant statement of white conservative supremacy right you you're in charge but nobody gets it they don't understand that you're supposed to be running things right um it's it's incredible how blatant it is but it also like you do have to understand he's speaking to this real frustration this is like where we get trump is these millions of people are like why don't they understand that we're supposed to be in charge um there's there's an incredibly i don't know if you're going to get to this like later there's the next video on the fucking youtube thing is from vice and it's glenn beck is a conservative in exile after trump oh yeah we can chat a little bit about that at the end i'll do a whole glenn beck episode of behind the bastards but i really i want to keep digging into this so

i'm gonna i'm gonna press play again here know, you've lived your life in a responsible way. You didn't take out a loan that didn't require any kind of proof of income, yet now you're being forced to bail those people out. You've been concerned about this country through the last administration and this administration. If you're like most people, both administrations. It's not about politics. You actually believe in something. And you thought for a while there your politicians did as well.

And now you kind of realize, well, maybe they don't. When you come home after a hard day at work, all you want to do is put your feet up. All you want to do is just relax and just watch a little television, catch up with what's happening in the world. But every time you turn that television on, it just seems like the whole world is spinning out of control. War. Islamic extremism europe on the brink even pirates now closer to home mexico isn't safe for vacations or our kids anymore 6 000 were killed or beheaded on our border just last year and phoenix now has the second highest rate of kidnapping in the world

so there's a lot going on there but i think the thing that is most fascinating to me is that like the way he just blatantly is like cartel violence it's a problem because it's not safe for our kids to vacation in mexico anymore mexico only exists for spring break that's uh well all problems are at their root about americans right like that's that's what's going on here well the other thing that's interesting to me is like that he he he throws into like europe under siege thing which was like like one of like the big like fascist things in like that period like word for word europe under siege like fortress europe shit yeah this is when andy andy no started his like no ghost zone yeah

exactly i think so right around here maybe a little bit later members of my family who are extremely caucasian live in in some of those no-go zones like i lived in europe in this period it's just so ridiculous yeah and it's it's incoherent like if you look at the specifics of everything because the he's yelling about the financial crash, because he has to be angry with it, because half of his market is terrified and losing money or have lost jobs and stuff as a result of the crash. But you can't portray it as a problem of, like, corporations rapaciously destroying and hollowing out the middle class.

So instead, the problem is that, like, foreign, there's a line in there in there about how like foreign corporations are just treating americans like a market which is like well how do americans treat everything like of course they treat them like a market it's capitalism um it's not very coherent but like what is coherent is this sense of grievance right that we have been we as americans have been specifically wronged um we're not, and we as, when he says Americans, obviously, he's only referring to a specific kind of American. But yeah, I'm going to press play again here. The forgotten man is you. The voice that no one seems to hear, just quietly saying,

enforce the law. Take responsibility for yourself. You can't have it all. And anybody who promised you that was a liar current economic downturn worst economic crisis worst month of job loss but something is happening in america paradise about to change your friends and neighbors republicans democrats independents they're all beginning to wake up and wonder how did this happen to us so yeah the the word september 10th 2001 just hit the screen as soon as he finishes that but i mean what you're seeing in that is like the stirrings of what becomes trumpism you know it's yeah very

much so i know yeah and there's just uh like photos of white people up on the left and right yeah like one of the most hideous like two columns i've ever seen in a video one and a half of each yeah yeah it's not done well their graphic design was they science had just simply had simply not advanced to that level yet like i need people to understand this. There are supposed to be three lines of pictures scrolling across the screen. The middle line is cut in half. There was half of one person's face

on each side of the screen. Yeah, it's a crime. And what's being done here, what Beck is doing here, is he's trying to take the anger and like that people still felt about 9-11 and turn it kind of towards in a different direction right because what had actually happened on 9-11 was that a group of terrorists had attacked the literal center of american capitalism um and of the american military industrial complex right those targets were were were picked specifically because of what they were. The Twin Towers contained one-tenth of all office

space in Manhattan. Their largest tenant was Morgan Stanley, which lost over 80% of its market value in the 2008 crash. Worst yet, in Beck's eyes, the victims of the attacks are all New Yorkers. Now, I don't know, if you're not in the conservative media bubble, you may not get it, but New Yorkers, that was like a slur. Yeah. Literally like a slur to call somebody a New Yorker. Yeah, New York values, right? Exactly.

So Beck can't focus on the actual victims of 9-11 because they are people that it is in his best interest to train his audience to despise. So instead, he focuses on how 9-11 was basically an act of disrespect against this forgotten man, right? Who's now kind of surging up like that's what he's doing here, right? That's what you have to do if you're Glenn Beck, because again, you can't actually focus on the real victims of this, which is why it's not incoherent ideologically for conservatives to talk the way they do

about 9-12 and then vote not to help people who were first responders and had their fucking lungs filled with poison. Yeah, it's good stuff. So obviously, because Beck has to thread this needle, he focuses instead on how the attack hit American prestige and confidence. I remember how picture perfect the day was. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and America seemed invincible. And yet, in the blink of an eye...

That airplane appeared to hit a little bit down the building around the 50th or 60th floor. Again, it struck flush. The skies were filled with black clouds and our hearts were full of terror and fear. We realized for the first time how fragile we really were. Then, something happened. 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.

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Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. 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. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and 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 audio books 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. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new

iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. So now it's September 12th, and the first image we see after disaster and destruction

is a group of firefighters holding a gigantic American flag with roughly the footprint of a school bus, right? And this is good, right? And also, it's interesting that this is what he chooses as the image of America rebounding from this great defeat, as opposed to, I don't know, firefighters pulling people out of the rubble and saving their lives? Like, no, they got got a big flag that's how you know we're gonna be okay it makes sense though right like it like the the actual lives are unimportant the thing that's important to save is the image of the image of america yeah it's the flag yeah the center is

also on the ground so yeah well look my flag Yeah. Flag code is for the not us. I'm going to continue here. We promised ourselves that we would never forget. On September 12th and for a short time after that, we really promised ourselves that we would focus on the things that were important. Our family, our friends, the eternal principles that allowed America to become the world's beacon of freedom. I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down

will hear all of us soon. Now, I want to point out here, the choice of that clip, it's both because that was a very famous speech that Bush gave that really made his presidency, or at least the early part of it in a lot of ways. You could argue that a significant amount of the kind of the political capital that he expended invading Iraq came from this particular speech and generally how he handled the days after the attacks. But it's interesting that they picked this because it really is, it's very much in line with this, this feeling and call talking about the forgotten man talking about, they're not listening to us. They don't know that we're in trouble.

What Bush is saying here is literal words are, um, I hear you and the people who knock these towers down are going to hear you, right? You, your, your anger will have a reaction in the world, right? It will be met with fire and fury, right? Like that is, that is the promise being made. And it's this, this undercurrent and everything Beck's doing here of the thing that he is working with, the clay that he is molding is the fact that these people don't feel listened to and like and that they deserve to be listened to and that the when they're angry at something it should be hurt right like that's that's the undercurrent he's talking about family

and togetherness but like that's what he's actually promising people i'm really interested in this like uh like i don't this is probably like 9 12 or whenever he's giving this speech um i think i always come back it's weird given where conservatism has gone right and like he's taken this in very much a clash of civilizations direction but like bush was giving like islam is the fabric of america speeches that week he was speaking in mosques and to muslims and being like that like this is not a clash of civilizations yeah now obviously fucking he then went and fucking like killed millions of muslims right most of them innocent civilians who had nothing to do with nearly all of them right uh

but yeah it's just interesting that like here's bush who was giving this like this isn't a clash of civilizations thing and it's become a clash of civilizations thing like eight years later yeah yeah and it's become but in a very different way right because one of the things that i think is happening here is the problems that americans regular americans are facing in 2009 are this massive economic strife caused by predatory lending outright fraudulent business practices by major banks, the fact that the legal system had been changed in order to allow this massive con to go on. And then it had been followed by this massive crony capitalist bailout that ignored regular working people.

Glenn doesn't want his viewers to focus on all of that, right? Because those are his backers, right? But he would. So instead, what he's doing is he's taking, they feel disrespected and vulnerable, because they have been, right? Now, there's unreasonable aspects to that, but they have been disrespected by the people who are stealing, like, all of the money in the country and fucking them over too and leaving their homes hollowed out, pill-addicted wastelands. But you can't focus on that. The cure is, the cure that Beck offers them is not materially improving anyone's conditions. It's not altering the systems that people cannot prey upon others that way. It's by striking someone else.

It's by striking back at that sense of agreement. Right. It's by this is what's going to turn into owning the libs. Right. Just hurting the left. Conservatism now is purely about harming groups of people they view as opposed to them. That's part of why trans people are so focused on by the right right now is that it's the symbol of liberalism to them. And they want to hurt that

symbol, right? This is the answer Beck is offering. And it's going to be adopted by the thought leaders of conservatism. We don't need to focus on doing anything nothing can be done right nothing can be done the grift is running out collapse is coming all that we can do is redirect the anger they feel that being fucked by us towards hurting other people that's that's the magic that beck is pulling off here it's pretty cool it's interesting too i think pretty well like it's interesting to compare this i think to, to, like, both Reagan and, like, Reagan and Nixon, because this is very, very similar to Nixon talking about, like, the silent majority and the stuff Reagan's doing. But it's like, those people have an actual political project. Like, Reagan is trying to completely annihilate the welfare state and, like, you know, they have stuff they're trying to do. But like post Bush, it was like Bush was the time they tried to like do stuff.

And it's like, like Bush is so hated by this point that like, like even Glenn Beck at the beginning of this is being like, well, we had concerns about the last administration, too. And I was like, well, yeah, because he like, yeah, yeah just by every conceivable metric just completely like annihilated the united states but yeah it's like it's it's this interesting thing that like yeah i was like this is the first time they've talked like this but the level of nihilism is just like so much like the the politics has been emptied of content to like such a greater extent. And I think, I think part of it too, also what's happening here is that like, there's like the,

like the, the only thing left, like for sort of like the capitalists who are backing back, like the only thing left for them that they could possibly win is getting rid of social security. And they kind of like, Oh, and Obama gave them the chance to do it.

And they kind of like blew it, but like, they, they don't like, this is like the eighties where they, they actually have like, there there of like, oh, and Obama gave them the chance to do it and they kind of like blew it. But like, they don't like, this is like the 80s where they actually have, like, there's tax racism. Like, there's not actually anything for them really to do, but they still have to sort of like, maintain this constant vigilance against anyone even remotely trying to make the world better by taking away some of their power. by taking away some of their power. And I think that's like another angle of why all of this is just sort of like this like incredibly empty nihilism because that's like, that's the only politics you can have

to defend a group of people who've won. Yep. Yeah. Well, that's a good note to end on. I hope you've all enjoyed getting to meet Glenn Beck in the 912 Project. I know I've enjoyed it.

Goodbye. 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 iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com.

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

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sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking música, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight up comedia, and that's a song that only nuestra gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming.

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