It Could Happen Here - Will the Texas Border Confrontation Cause A Civil War? (No)

Episode Date: January 29, 2024

Robert, James, and Mia discuss Greg Abbott's confrontation with the federal government, the real humanitarian crisis at the border, and how the whole situation is being exploited by right wing grifters.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko.

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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. Calls on Media. Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about it happening here. And in the original cadence of this website, or website, in the original cadence of the show, that was a reference to a civil war, right? A new civil war. It could happen here.

That's what season one was. Made a big splash. Now we kind of covered the dystopia beat in general. But today, we're getting back to our motherfucking roots because the state of Texas has recently declared a big old fuck you to the federal government, i.e. having its national guardsmen deploy razor wire at the border and stop border patrol people from, for example, performing rescues of people who are trapped in the water, drowning. It's a whole thing. At least three

migrants have already died as a result of this fuckery by texas governor greg abbott and now like i don't know 20 states something near to that have there may be more uh by the time you hear this but something like 20 states have declared that they're in support of governor abbott's refusal to let the feds in and insistence that he's dealing with an invasion and must take on the border, Texas itself. And some of those states are now sending or at least claim they're going to send National Guardsmen. So when this all started happening, we all got a lot of messages. I got about a billion from people being like, is this it? Is this the Civil War? a billion from people being like is this it is this the civil war and obviously a big chunk of that comes from right-wing memes because they are all talking about like yeah let's do it let's have

us a civil war we're all gonna start fighting over some guy posted his handgun collection like we're ready bunch of revolvers yeah stupid shit it's stupid shit but you know it's not unreasonable to be like this seems like a massive constitutional crisis that's potentially in line with some of the crises that precipitated the original Civil War. You've got a governor completely defying not now, not just, you know, the president and the federal government, but the Supreme Court, who ruled that you can't just have your fucking Texas goons stop a federal law enforcement agency from doing its job on the border. So, you know, how serious is this? And is this the kind of thing that's going to lead to a 24's new Civil War movie? And my quick take on this is, is in fact, a governor stretching out his authority and testing how much he can get away with against the overall federal government because he and a lot of other conservative governors want to do things that are directly in contravention of the Civil Rights Act, of the Bill of Rights, of numerous federal protections for their citizens. of numerous federal protections for their citizens. And this is kind of a way of being like, well, if they won't fuck with us over this, then we can probably start imprisoning journalists and killing people that, or at least imprisoning people that otherwise we would not be able to,

right? Like this is a right-wing power grab, and it's an attempt to see, is the central government weak enough that we can get away with this stuff? I don't think they're all going to start shooting at each other. I don't think Greg Abbott wants to get in a shooting war with the federal government over a mostly ginned up. The dimensions of the crisis are ginned up and fake in terms of like what he is claiming it is. There is, in fact, a humanitarian crisis at our border, but that's not what his issue is. So that's my quick take. We're going to get into more of all of that. james you are our resident border correspondent borrespondent and you have some very strong feelings on how all of this has been interpreted in the media so i wanted to pull to you first and then we'll we'll get to mia and we'll just kind of round table after that i do i uh in a

rare instance for me i have strong feelings about the way this has been covered and strong feelings about the coverage of the border which i know is a thing i talk about all the time but i am beyond frustrated with the way this has been covered it's hugely irresponsible and it's completely context free like there are people as there always are with the border and there always are with the right who just tourist outside things that they understand and try and generate clicks by g-ing up the fear of a civil war. Yes. I've seen dozens of people sharing headlines about National Guard deployments. It happened years ago.

The National Guard had been deployed to our border for years. I see National Guard troops every day. I had a National Guard guy shoot at me and go, don't shoot at me, shout at me. A friend of ours took one of their rifles. Yes, yes. The National Guard have been extremely based in arming the butterfly center. Yeah, they're there. There's a federal deployment.

Texas also has a state deployment. These are different things. And other states have also sent National Guardsmen to the border before, by the way. Correct, Kentucky. This is not the first time this has happened. Yeah, yeah. So there's a federal deployment and then there are state deployments.

Both of those are distinct things. Something to know about the state deployment that is missing in the context-free reporting that you're seeing is that these guys aren't getting any of their federal deployment benefits. So they won't be getting the TRICARE. They won't be getting the time towards their their retirement they won't be getting their gi bill

etc so like the uh the texas guys who are deployed on state orders are really that the national guard are getting fucked by greg abbott like uh it's it's laughable that that like you know he's pretending that he cares about texas while actively screwing over and robert and i have spoken to some of those texas national guard folks last time we were in texas did not seem to be super motivated to be no they're the only military unit i've seen tried to form a union because they're not in the federal they're not in the federal orders so they can attempt to form a union get billy bragg down to the border we gotta do this yeah drop in let's get billy back i'll get him going over the rio grande and uh we'll insert billy bragg in there i'll fix it um it has been

the most dangerous deployment that they've had including deployments to iraq they they have unfortunately uh a habit of drinking and driving which has not proven healthy for them they also there's a quirk of texas law that means that they can't stop national guard soldiers from bringing their own firearms yeah which is great yeah yeah and thus they can't stop them accidentally killing each other with their own firearms also yeah it's good stuff a tng soldier did die trying to save a migrant from the river yes he drowned so like it has not like it is a very boring but also quite dangerous deployment that you know they have really high they wrote a manifesto a couple of years ago about how bullshit their deployment was you know which is which is really great stuff um yeah so much of this has been reported without

any context right like i think genuinely a lot of the people reporting on this are not aware there have been national there's a national guard here in california like i say i see them all the time they're not supposed to interdict migrants but i see them doing surveillance and i see them guarding open-air prisons in jacumba almost every day and i think that seems to have been missed by the majority of people covering this. We should talk more about the open air prison part, because I think there's a lot of people who seem to be getting the impression that the Biden administration is like, actually substantively trying to do something to like, help immigrants. And like, they're like, this, this fight is like between like pro and anti immigration is like, no. This is a fight between whether you think these people should be killed

incredibly quickly by a combination of razor wire and rivers, or whether you think they should starve to death. Yeah, or die of dehydration walking through the desert, or die of hypothermia walking through the mountains. I think I've said this on the podcast before, but I was helping a three-year-old girl who was hypothermic last week. That is what Joe Biden is doing. That is a Joe Biden policy being enacted by Joe Biden as Joe Biden wants it to be enacted or at very least yeah I'm sure his personal uh like complicity or even understanding

is is relatively low given his understanding it seems of a lot of things but uh the Biden administration's policy is to deter people by making crossing more difficult and more dangerous which de facto makes it more deadly what abbott is doing with his razor wire and his floating fence is a version of the same thing like they are not distinctly different when everyone was up in arms about those three people drowning that's a tragedy 850 people died crossing the border in 2022 that was a normal day like the the distinction is is maybe in degree but really it's it's in aesthetic between between abbott and biden on this and it's just two dudes chest-stomping each other trying to not look weak there is not an option in the u.s system which allows you to vote for the party that doesn't want migrants to die like like both of the parties are completely in lockstep on that and let's uh let's let's be very

clear about something part of why that is is because an overwhelming number of americans are indifferent or actively hostile to the survival of migrants yes like this is an it is incredibly unpopular in this country to think these people are human beings who deserve decent treatment and decent lives this is a fight that the left has lost comprehensively mostly in large part because the left has completely given up on it which is why you've got fucking a lot of these nazbol assholes saying shit like you know this is uh we have like like saying basically protectionist nativist kind of shit these days right because i think that like leftist media

has also and and to include i guess liberal media also has completely oh yeah like being complicit in this right like the amount of stories that you will read about migrants that don't talk to migrants in the next few weeks will be a lot if you care to read them right and that's because people don't want to come here they're either afraid of coming here or they don't want to take the time they don't have the language skills there are people who have the language skills who don't who don't get these jobs and are people who don't have the language skills and who don't have the understanding of how the border on the ground works as opposed to immigration policy in dc works and you're going to see a lot

of people who don't live at the border who don't come to the border writing about the border and yeah that's how we got here and that's how we're getting to this it's largely like a giant panic about a nothing burger but um yeah it's the reporting has been in continuous fear responsible and that is in some degree complicit yeah and and i think this is also the explanation for why there's a lot of people going like why is biden not like sending the troops why is biden not cracking down because he doesn't fucking give a shit it's the same policy he doesn't care right like there's not actually substantive disagreements except over like whether it should be like some like a really stupid political stunt over whether it should be like federal troops like on or like federal agents like on the border or whether it should

be the razor wire like he doesn't care yeah you know and to be fair i will say i don't think this is the start this right here i don't think is the start of a civil war we may if we have one we may someday see this on like the list of factors contributing to in the years leading up to it. But I will say if we do ever have a shooting civil war, it will be something this dumb. That I feel absolutely certain of. It will be a thing where no one involved really cares about the issue that starts it. It's just a dick measuring contest that goes too far. I just don't think this is the dick measuring contest.

But to be fair fair it will be something this dumb don't worry folks don't worry if we do start shooting each other it will be just as stupid as this yeah i do think that like i think we're extremely likely to start shooting civil war over this or in the next few years generally i do think the chance of shooting context without a civil war, shooting specifically of migrants, especially in places where they're not safe, like open air detention centers, is going up.

And that scares the shit out of me. Like someone who spends a lot of his life there. And I do think that there might, I mean, we saw in 2018, right? And we've covered this extensively. The tree of life shooting was in large part motivated by right-wing rhetoric about a caravan of migrants.

I was in Tijuana in 2018. I spent months of my life helping people down there. Anyone who's scared of those people is paranoid, to say the least. They were mostly fine, wonderful, very friendly people. I spent Christmas with them. But yeah, the 2018 tree of life shooting came from paranoia about the border we're seeing that same paranoia from right-wing media and from liberal media now and i think that it would not be unreasonable to have that fear of

individual acts of violence and terrorism along the border yeah i i think uh one of the things we're going to have to do in the near future is get better at understanding kind of the media dimensions of of of conflicts like this and and what is an irresponsible way to respond to them and i think treating this like it is a civil war type deal is kind of feeding into the rights image of itself and their desire to treat this like they're revolutionaries now that said what is the right thing to do because like the uh the what the biden administration seems to be doing right now is largely kind of ignoring it. I think at some point they will probably try to nationalize the guard and we'll see what happens then.

One thing that's kind of worth noting is that this is primarily gone viral on right-wing media. I'm seeing very little of this on like mainstream centrist, like liberal media sources. And I'm seeing little on this because like most of those sources don't really care about the border unless there's some way to like drum up fear against migrants like that they'll do a caravan story but this just this just simply doesn't sell i think when it comes to like what is a responsible way to report on this i think you have to start by centering what's actually happening to the

migrants, what's being done to them as opposed to focusing on this dick measuring, because that's the actual harm here. The harm here is not that Abbott has been mean to the Border Patrol and it's not that Texas and these other states, these rebel states

are raising an army to fight the federal government. It's that there's this argument between the people in power in our country about how bad should things be for people who are already desperate. And I think that's where you should center your focus. Also, I've just noticed this on my other screen. This is a bit off topic, but you know that movie Rebel Moon by Zack Snyder? Oh God. There's an ad for the canned water company,

Liquid Death, that just is showing a bunch of like imperial troops from that movie beating a man and then drinking liquid death water as they relax afterwards. And it's the most unhinged ad i've ever seen it's like running aside a vox article i've never seen anything like this before it's just like what the wait a second what zach snyder come on you can't do zacks no

that fucking guy jesus talking of advertising, buy some Liquid Death. 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. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. And we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline

is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to the leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things

that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com.

On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez.

Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami.

Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. Yeah, so I want to talk about Grift because we talked about advertising a bit.

I don't know if you guys have seen the number of right-wing influencers. Okay, so I'm looking at friend of the podcast, Tim Pool's Twitter here. Oh, Tim, there is a guy who is excited to have a civil war where he will be murked immediately by one of his bodyguards. Yeah, there is a man who's seen combat and knows what it is to hear rounds cracking off over your head. Okay, Tim Pool, i'm just going to quote here but i'll have ha ha ha ha ha ha etc fuck me dude and then safe and ready meals.com

uh pool is not the only one on the uh buckets of food grift right alex jones has been on this too oh yeah a million years yeah yeah yeah he's a bit long time uh long time food storage guy alex jones a lot of these guys are like very clearly geeing up fears of civil war on the right so that they can sell people powder dried eggs like it's it's so transparent like they it's in the same tweet yeah sobiac trump calls for all willing states to deploy National Guard to Texas border and start the deportations. And then there's a special partner offer for mypatriotsupply.com. God. Which is the way to fuel your bigotry, I guess.

Guys, two things. First off, if you buy your storable food from some right-wing media grifters deal site, you will spend the apocalypse shitting yourself to death. Like, it's all horrible if you are going to buy if you are going to throw a bunch of money on store if you are a sane and reasonable person who wants to store food learn how to make your own jerky learn how to can food you can do it very cheaply it is not expensive to can your own food if you know what you're doing you can can stuff that is in season and get it really cheap from the grocery store and you can pickle and do other kinds of can't pressure canning it's really economical and it will last a long time

if you are going to spend a shitload of money on storable freeze-dried food you're going to be spending a bunch of money anyway just go buy mountain house buy mountain house it's the good stuff it's tasty as far as i know no right winger advertises on them and it's it's actually pretty good food yeah that's what i keep in my car for emergencies you will not shit ever yeah ever again yeah you may never poop again but the fucking biscuits and gravy breakfast selection they have man when you're alone in the mountains that shit is fucking fire oh my god yeah that will it is like a bung for the digestive system yeah i just want to plug lentils.org which i've

checked it is a website about eating lentils yeah yeah lentils the shit forever yeah it is find balance between the yin and the yang in your in your post-apocalypse life with mountain house and lentils.org it's what i have for you today you know what's not running on lentils guys unfortunately this is not an ad pivot i've just i've done the albain switch it's this fucking convoy that's going to the border oh yeah about this a little yeah let's do that they're like this is where i'm really done with irresponsible reporting. Like being like, oh, no, January 6th, part two. Here's a link if you want to take part. Like, what the fuck is wrong with you? Stop it.

But I look right wing groups have tried to run convoys probably a dozen times since 2020. Right. I think we can all think of a different convoy that's got stuck under a bridge. One drove by my house and then basically didn't get any further than that. Yep, yep. They get lost. They disagree about directions. What a lot of people are going to realize is that the Texas border is 12 hours from anywhere in Texas. When you are in dallas i believe this is accurate when you are in dallas it is faster to drive to chicago than it is to drive to the border

it is so fucking far away from anything you could cross europe in the time it will take you to get down there yeah i i love the idea of a convoy of like, you know, like completely Q-pilled lunatics just descending on the town of Martha. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fucking passing marathon and going, where in the Christ are we? Yeah, it is a really good,

really beautiful bike ride from Martha to the border. There's some dirt roads you can take. Oh, and Martha, by the way, folks, if you're looking to go down to the border, very fun town. You'll have a good time in Marfa. Yeah, do love a bit of Marfa, really. I'm not going to tell my Marfa story.

I'll tell you guys when we're done. But yeah, it is not link salacious. It's just I don't tell it. But yeah, Marfa is near the border. Lots of things are not. It is a very long way from, I guess, like maybe people could fly to El Paso. It is near the border lots of things are not it is a very long way from i guess like maybe people could fly to el paso that's near the border um but yeah it's this idea so there's three convoys right one i think is supposed to go from virginia beach to texas

good luck guys enjoy spending seven,000 in gas each. Yes, exactly right. Look to the cost of fuel. You fucking idiots. Have fun, homies. Another one is going from Las Cruces to Yuma and the one is going from here at San Ysidro

to Yuma. The drive from San Ysidro to Yuma is boring AF. But good luck i guess like good luck spending that california hopefully they get pulled off at some of the gas stations like east of san diego where it's still like six or seven dollars a gallon because you're fucked if you need fuel there and you can't buy it from anyone else um but yeah the idea that people are going to spend all their money like driving across the country it's also just very like there's the meme right of the like the old white guy wearing oakley wraparound or fake oakley wraparound sunglasses doing a selfie video in his car to rant about like

anything and everything but like i think it's very illustrative how many of these people don't feel safe outside their vehicles and like need the activism to involve their uh their f250 yeah well in part because most of them are like like most americans not in great shape not physically imposing so if you're sitting in an f250 you feel big and powerful like yes james you and i both have trucks one of the things about trucks that is nice is that being in a truck you're elevated above the rest of the road right oh yeah and that that gets to a lot of people's heads especially if they have absolutely nothing else going on in their lives which nobody participating in this fucking caravan does so they yeah this is the like it's it's it's their it's emotional support right they're sitting in their truck

they've got their gun they're not breathing hard because they have to like walk around the world um and they they would desperately prefer that they can that's where how their activism that's how their participation in the second civil war will will uh occur yeah through the means of truck. Bunch of fucking wankers. Yeah. So I do want to get into kind of like what we do feel is the actual threats of this. Again, I think the danger here is you've got a lot of kind of fights going down about like how far can governments take their anti-trans legislation? How mean can they be to undocumented immigrants? Like, how much violence can they deploy in deporting people? What can they do to journalists?

What can they do to people speaking out or engaging in protest without violating the Bill of Rights? You know, what can they do to marginalized communities without violating the Civil Rights Act? they do to marginalized communities without violating the Civil Rights Act. I think this is an attempt to set a precedent for ignoring federal control so that they can be crueler to large groups of people within their purview. And I think a lot of this is a reaction to this is kind of their, what if we lose this election, right?

I think there is a fear, and I don't necessarily think this fear is actually like borne out. lose this election, right? I think there is a fear, and I don't necessarily think this fear is actually like borne out. I don't think the right's national hopes in terms of its ability to get elected again after Trump are as poor as people want them to be, as I might want them to be. But I think there is real fear among the right that if Trump doesn't win this, they're not going to win the presidency again, right? And I think part of what they're doing is setting up, all right, then we will just take over and take increasing autonomy in our red states, and we will effectively govern them very differently and govern them in contravention of how the rest of the country and how the federal government, how the Supreme Court says that they can be governed, because we can't be cruel enough

without that. And I think that is what they are stepping up to be able to do. If you're asking, you know, what do I think will be sort of like line crossings that could lead to mass social violence in this country? One thing, I don't think they're going to take that leap while a Democrat is in control of the federal government and the Defense Department. I think they will push for a violent crackdown on everything left of the far right if they win power again, because they talk about that repeatedly because they promised to do that. And I think that if they lose, there's an off chance.

I don't think this is likely, but it's not impossible that protests and violence as acts of protest against Biden winning a second term could snowball into, you know, something that resembles an insurgency. Not impossible. I don't think that's the likeliest outcome, but I don't see them starting to shoot at federal troops now while Biden is in the White House. For one thing, I feel like that's the thing that would really clinch it for Biden. I feel like that's the thing that would really clinch it for Biden. If the Texas National Guard starts trying to secede, well, you've made his reelection campaign easier, right? Because now none of the red states, like none of the states that secede, you can't also have an election where those states get to vote, right? Like that's just not the way it works.

Yeah. So I don't feel like that's the likeliest thing. I think this is, yeah, I think i've made it clear what i think and i think it's really clear that it's time for our second ad break that's right hopefully it's an ad for the new trans fried oreos have you guys seen those yeah no i've not seen those what wait trans fried oreos well yeah yeah maybe it's just me i was just reading a story earlier and i noticed trans fat or no no they uh they have like a blue and pink trans flag oreo oh yeah well okay two years ago hold on this is okay okay okay i was about to say either way i don't really have

i just put a link in there to woke woke biscuit thatuit. That's good. I have no opinion on this. I guess it's good Oreos aren't bigoted. Yeah. Well, don't buy these. Give your money to me instead. Yeah. I don't think it really matters either. 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, 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. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose.

This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though, I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to god things can change if we're loud enough so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean.

He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian.

Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation.

Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts ah we're back you know one thing i think about like part of why this is going viral and i think part of what's an issue about this with the way it's being talked about on the left but also you know the way the way it's marketable to the right is that the thing about this confrontation is that it looks like a civil war but it looks like it's it's exactly perfectly engineered to look like the lead up to civil war one and that is

incredibly misleading it's it's it's basically it's like a marketing thing right because like yeah and this is something we've talked about on this show for like literally since day one is that like a civil war in the united states is not going to look like a bunch of states like form an alliance and then all they're fighting all of the other states like it's not it's not going to look like that it's going to look closer to syria than it is going to look like like the the first American civil war but people haven't shaken the like the sort of like brain worms of a civil war is like 16 states fight 16 states even though every single civil war that we've had like in the intervening like 100 like 200 years has not been that and here's here's how wrong here's how people are comprehensively wrong about this,

right? On the left side, you have LMAO. You guys are going to fight the federal government with your AR 15s. They got bombs and planes and like, well, we've seen how well our bombs and planes work against insurgencies. We're not good at winning those.

If there were a real insurgency and there's certainly ingredients to it, it would actually be a problem for the U S however, that does not look like 16 States declaring themselves seceded and going to because that's a conventional war and you know what happened if greg abbott started a conventional war against the u.s greg abbott doesn't have a fucking bunker right yeah like we could we could he could be he could be blown up he is again nothing against being in a wheelchair but this is not a man who is capable of living underground and hiding from federal bombers. That's just not the kind of conflict that you need to be concerned about.

Yeah, this man does not have the Bin Laden dog in him. He just does not. No, he sure doesn't. The idea of Greg Abbott taking to a cave system in doing a tora bora at the border of texas he's hanging out and fucking fucking big bend or whatever yeah yeah tora boreing big bend jesus christ we'll be outstanding we would love to see it yeah but unfortunately grainy photos of greg abbott and like the mountains of southern texas shaking hands with mexican revolutionaries as they smuggle rifles to him rifles that they also got from the united states yeah that is what we call the circle

of life oh god yeah god we can we can dream but it does seem unfortunately unlikely yeah it would be very funny uh yeah see a seal team go after greg abbott yeah yeah absolutely seal team fighting the texas rangers oh if only if only just a bunch of dudes each with a revolver because they thought it looked cool until the very first time someone was shooting back at them. Yeah, it's a real, like, who is on the most HGH competition? Whoever can stop the steroids from flooding in is going to win. That's the spice in this particular conflict.

Yeah, we would love to see it. Joe Rogan's the Baron Harkonnen of making sure everybody's spec ops guys have enough gear floating above a fucking table. Great. It would be wonderful in some senses. But yeah, I don't think we're going to see a shooting waterboard. It will be interesting to see how like Biden has screwed the pooch in terms of like his media management of this i would say and it will be interesting to see uh how hard he goes in response

like or if he goes yeah in response i think the smart answer would be nationalize the guard if there's things that you can actually prosecute people over prosecute them and continue to not deal with it in the media. Like his instinct isn't bad in terms of not wanting to feed in directly to the right wing outrage loop. But you still have to you still have to go after them for this. Right. And it's the kind of thing it's probably like too much to hope for any real action being taken. But I would say that's probably the smarter option. Right. not to say anything of like what the most moral thing to do is but the smart option is don't feed into the fundraising loop because we should probably get in on that this is all a fundraising thing right in addition to them testing the waters that's the biggest dimension of this is and that's why we talked

earlier all of these guys tim pool and jack posiec, and I'm sure the Daily Wire guys are in it now, are like advertising their storable foods companies and shit. The point of all this, all right wing messaging, all far right messaging starts as a grift. It all starts with a product to sell. That's by the way, how guns became so enmeshed with the far right, right? A lot of gun companies realize that like, Americans only need so many guns for like reasonable self-defense and hunting and even even recreational purposes there's only so many guns a man could shoot at a time but you can really get people to stockpile shit like crazy if you convince them they're like preparing to be guerrilla fighters in a in a future civil war and so and a lot of these like gun tuber

influencers that's kind of where they increasingly went because that's where the money was and so this becomes more and more of a part of right-wing politics because a lot of people on the right have a lot of money to be made in in messaging this kind of stuff and selling this kind of stuff the same thing is true with the civil war shit it's true with these like fears that the government you know we can sell you storable food we can sell you fucking bunkers all of this stuff comes out of some sort of financial grift and the biggest thing that most of the people involved in this are hoping for fucking jack posobiec doesn't want to be fucking hiding underground getting bombed by the u.s air force jack posobiec wants to make another

million dollars off of affiliate sales of bullshit right yeah that's what and and a lot of these people these guys doing this caravans to the borders they're not planning on spending their own money on gas they're hoping that they can crowdfund a shitload of money and i'm sure one of them will steal all of it and run away right that's what usually happens with this kind of shit yeah that's what they're all hoping to do. And so that's kind of the over, if you want to actually hurt them, if you're looking at where do we, how do we draw a strategic victory out of this, find a way to damage their ability to profit off of this shit. And I do think part of it is not making this as big a story as it otherwise might be, but that's not simply enough because the

right is large enough that just through their media hyping this up, they can make a decent amount of money off this stuff. So more complex solutions are needed. Yeah, I do think we should probably discuss the potential of Abbott using this in a personal or later presidential run, right? He's in New Delhi at the moment. Have you seen this? He sure is.

He's in New Delhi hanging out with everybody's favorite pseudo dictator of india modi yeah like abbott trying to build this kind of uh like electoral alliance and international alliance for uh like fascist like wolfenstein america is uh is i think like it's concerning because like trump has a lot of baggage and like i think obviously has a great degree of personal support switching in the primaries but if they don't make if they don't stick the landing with trump i think abbott is waiting in the wings to uh to make perhaps a more competent fascist than trump and make an attempt at running for the presidency not good anything else to say

fuck all of them yeah that's it but okay so the other thing that you actually can do about this is that look this bullshit all of this stuff is going to continue until there's actually some kind of sustained attack by the left on like politically on the border regime right that was a thing that when I when I was like you know when I was like like coming up by 2016 2017 2018 we were doing

right there was occupied ice there was like there were mass demonstrations there was like critical pressure being applied and we didn't go far enough part of the reason we didn't go far enough is a lot of people fucking a lot of very optimistic political groups like including like psl etc etc like hijacked a lot of these things and pulled people off of occupations but you know there was actually there were there have been periods in my lifetime like not that long ago where there was actually forward progress being made about this shit to the point where like even

that we're like the democrats were trying to co-opt it and it doesn't fucking have to be like this we don't have to have hundreds of people fucking dying at the border every year we don't have to have people in open air fucking prisons it doesn't have to be like this we can fight them and we can win but it requires

actually like it requires actually going and fighting and you know you have you have to act you have to actually be willing to do this you have to be willing to commit to the organizing but if we don't if we just keep leaving all of this shit to like just the literal howling fascists and then biden who is like it like on on the border doing the same thing but not being but not like howling about it this country is going to go into

fucking oblivion and we are going you are going to see in your lifetime the US government shooting people on the border like with machine guns, right? If we don't stop this fucking now, that is what you are going to live to see and it does not, we don't have to we don't have to live in that world

but you have to act now yeah i think that's a great like it is also within our power to like there is not a voting option but there is always a mutual aid option at the border and i know i bang on about this but like if you are within range of the border you can go go and help. If you're not, there are migrant communities in your city, in your town who need your help. And like the way we get through to our boomer uncles and Facebook aunts and stuff is by showing them that migrants are people with stories who are just the same as you. And they just want a chance to raise their kids somewhere where they're not going to get fucking killed by a car bomb and the the more human interactions more people can have with migrants and the more stories we can tell that center migrants as people not as numbers or a tsunami or any of this dehumanizing rhetoric like the the more likely we are to take the teeth

out of this um and that's something that all of us can do yes all right so that's a good thing to end on and obviously uh buy our storable foods go to pissingmypantsdriedfoods.net and use promo code robert evans says the apocalypse is coming it's a very long promo code but you will get actually it increases the price by 15 but please do it we get anyway yeah well we get more money that's gonna be it for us here and it could happen here until next time i don't know go to sleep with dreams of a jay dam taking out greg abbott right in the right in the austin cap. Just bam, baby. Won't happen, but it is a funny thing to think about.

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 slash sources. Thanks for listening. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose.

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