The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – American Rule: How a Nation Conquered the World but Failed Its People by Jared Yates Sexton

Episode Date: September 20, 2020

American Rule: How a Nation Conquered the World but Failed Its People by Jared Yates Sexton Jysexton.com From writer and political analyst Jared Yates Sexton comes a journey through the history of the United States, from the nation’s founding to the twenty-first century, which examines and debunks the American myths we've always told ourselves. In recent years, Americans have faced a deluge of horrifying developments in politics and culture: stolen elections, fascist rallies, families torn apart and locked away. A common refrain erupts at each new atrocity: This isn't who we are. In American Rule, Jared Yates Sexton upends those convenient fictions by laying bare the foundational myths at the heart of our collective American imagination. From the very origins of this nation, Americans in power have abused and subjugated others; enabling that corruption are the many myths of American exceptionalism and steadfast values, which are fed to the public and repeated across generations. Working through each era of American growth and change, Sexton weaves together the origins and perpetuation of these narratives still in the public memory, and the acts we have chosen to forget. Stirring, deeply researched, and disturbingly familiar, American Rule is a call to examine our own misconceptions of what it means, and has always meant, to be an American. About Jared Yates Sexton Jared Yates Sexton is an author and political analyst whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, The Daily Beast, Newsweek, Politico, and elsewhere. He is the author of three books of short fiction, a novel, The People Are Going To Rise Like The Waters Upon Your Shore: A Story of American Rage, an examination of the 2016 Presidential Election, The Man They Wanted Me To Be: Toxic Masculinity and a Crisis of Our Own Making, a dissection of American masculinity, and, most recently, American Rule: How A Nation Conquered The World But Failed Its People, published by Dutton/Penguin-Random House. Currently he serves as an associate professor of writing at Georgia Southern University and is the co-host of The Muckrake Podcast.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks this is voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here with another podcast we certainly appreciate you and you and you and that guy over there and that young lady over there. All of you folks, we just appreciate you guys tuning in.

So thanks for being here. We've got, of course, always the most brilliant authors. What we do is we put in the Google machine, you know, brilliant authors really smart people and then we just bring those folks to the show it's pretty darn amazing how it just keeps happening over and over again but that's a little trick so don't tell anyone uh anyway guys uh we have the most brilliant authors on the show and you can watch the video version of this conversation at youtube.com forward slash Chris Voss. Hit that bell notification button. Technology brought to you by video. It's just amazing.

In 2020, the stuff they have nowadays. Next, they're going to have cars that drive themselves. Anyway, guys, refer the show to your friends, neighbors, relatives, thecvpn.com, chrisvosspodcastnetwork.com. There's nine podcasts there because we couldn't think of a tenth one. So we're going to, I don't know, give me a break. Anyway, one big announcement we want to make today, this just actually came across the emails.

That's another 2020 technology. The Chris Voss Show and all the nine podcasts are on Amazon Music. You go to music.amazon.com and our bloody podcast is up there. Holy crap. So next time you're just shopping for junk on Amazon, you can listen to the music of the podcast and I don't know, I'm going to shut up and get on with the show. Anyway guys, we have a most brilliant author. I'm really excited to have this gentleman on because what he's written is an extraordinary piece of work and follows the theme of everything that we've been doing. His book is American Rule, How a Nation Conquered the World but Failed Its People.

This barely just came out, September 15th of 2020. His name is Jared Yates Sexton. He is an author and political analyst whose work has appeared in the New York Times, the New Republic, the Daily Beast, Newsweek, Politico, and elsewhere. He is the author of three books of short fiction, a novel, The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore, a Story of American Rage, An Examination of the 2016 Presidential Election, The Man They Wanted Me to Be,

Toxic Masculinity and a Crisis of Our Own Making, A Dissection of American Masculinity, maybe it should be a vasectomy, I don't know, and most recently, American Rule, How a Nation Conquered the World but Failed Its People, should be a vasectomy i don't know and most recently american rule how a nation conquered the world but failed its people published by dunton penguin random house he serves an associate professor of writing at georgia southern university and he's the co-host of the infamous and famous the muck rake podcast welcome the show how are you Jared? Hey, thanks for having me, man.

I just made that up at the end, the infamous but famous Muckrake podcast, so I don't know what that means. I mean, listen, it depends on who you ask. I think beloved by some, hated by others. I think that that's along the same lines. That's going to be on my cemetery tombstone. That's not bad. Hey, that's not a bad thing to have on your tombstone. At least people who don't know you will walk by it, take a look at it, and stare for a second.

I think that's important. Actually, on my tombstone, it's going to be much like Trump's. Please don't pee on me. Oh, hold on. His will be the opposite. So give us your plugs, Jared, so that we can take and look you up on the interwebs. Yeah. Uh, if you, if you want to find more of my stuff, uh, after, after we talk, or maybe

you just want to go and tell me how terrible this is. I mean, you can find me on Twitter at JY Sexton. I got a blog over at the muckrake.com. Um, yeah. And the muckrake podcast, which again, maybe you can go and listen to, and either it's beloved or hated. I mean, it's up to you. I mean, you know, I, I, I'll tell you a funny story as long as we're joking about this

i have people on twitter when i got really successful that hate me but i would catch them writing on twitter they're like i really hate chris voss the other one would go yeah i hate him too i just follow him and everything he does because i want to see when he finally goes off the rail and the car crashes. So being hated, that's not bad. Yeah, that's not bad. I,

one of the things that I enjoy is on Twitter whenever I post something and somebody will say something incredibly hateful. One of the most like joyous things I can do is to then click on them. And when they follow me, I'm just like, what is this? Like what, why,

why are, why are we doing this? Like you, you have decided that you hate me as a person, but you have to have me in your life, which is just the most codependent sort of gross thing I can imagine, really. I think it's Rick Wilson. Is it Rick Wilson of the Lincoln Project? He kind of really taught me how to get back at people, how to respond to them. Like, one of my favorite things to do to Trump voters when they respond, especially like my ads and stuff on Facebook, I go, you're just cute, aren't you?

Like they had no idea what to do with the whole. Anyway, let's get into your book. Let's talk about your book. What motivated you to write this epic tome? Well, so here's the thing. So I've been covering politics for the last few years i sort of cut my teeth and and got any soapbox or anything that you want to call it i got it in 2016 covering the donald trump campaign like i was sneaking into rallies i was reporting live from it this was

back whenever you know he'd go on cable news and they would just show him for an hour and a half to two hours and you know and then i was going into the crowds and all the people in the crowd were telling me you know they were like saying the most amazingly racist sexist stuff imaginable they were talking about wanting to round up journalists and lamottimize and murder them like i mean it was straight fascism so i was just screaming to everyone who would listen listen listen, there's something going on here. There's something going on with like the Trump movement. And, you know, that's sort of how I cut my teeth on this thing. But then, post 2016, I was like going around. And the thing that created this actually was it was a reading that I did the on the anniversary of the 2016 election in 2017. And, you know, I had a pretty conventional understanding of American history.

I've taken classes. I've studied it. I read everything I can get my hands on. And somebody asked me, like, how we got to Trump. And, like, my answer was pretty standard, right? I started with Richard Nixon, and I sort of weaved my way through, like, modern history or whatever. But then I started to realize that, like like my understanding of history was very conventional. And it didn't make sense that Donald Trump was at the end of it.

Right. Because we always get told that America is always improving itself. It's always growing more and more free and equal and fair. And all of a sudden you end up at Donald Trump. And I thought I wanted to go back and sort of understand history better. And what I realized almost immediately, is that my understanding of history, which is what most people are taught in schools, and what most people get from movies and books and stuff like that, was not just wrong. It was dangerously wrong. Like, I didn't understand how America had actually gotten to this point. And the more that I started studying it, the more that I realized that American history and the idea of American exceptional bomb. And it has allowed America to not only craft itself

as the hero of the world, but to really hide a lot of the really insidious things that's done and a lot of the fascistic, authoritarian movements in its country. And I realized that I had to try and destroy it. I had to try and dismantle the weapon, so to speak, and try and figure out exactly what's going on because the problem is that fascists are very happy to use mythologies and false histories to

you know empower themselves so i realized i had to go after that maybe skipping a little ahead and we'll we'll fall back but who are those people that are trying to weaponizing it there's a lot there's a lot of people. For instance, I think we have a real problem in this country of trying to offer what I call silver bullet explanations. The one thing. The Illuminati.

Right. A lot of people are like, okay, well, Donald Trump is doing this for this reason and the people around him are just evil trying to do this stuff. It's not true. There are a lot of interlocking interests around the Donald Trump administration and American politics. Donald Trump, first and foremost, is just interested in stripping America bare and selling off the parts. You know, he's interested in taking what's supposed to be for the public good and turning it into an engine for corruption. That is his main

thing. It's what does it for him. But he's also surrounded by a few people. There are corporatists who are really interested in getting rid of any regulation whatsoever and creating what you would call like a hyper-capitalistic libertarian paradise. I mean, there's a reason Elon Musk wants to create a kingdom on Mars, right? Then you have another group of people that you would call dominionist. They're people who are religious to the point where they literally either want to hasten the end of the world, like an apocalyptic battle, right? Or they want to create a theocratic regime in which Christian values are imposed on literally everyone, right? These would be the handsmaid. Yeah, these are the handmaid's tale

people you know and then finally all of these things and this is actually a big part of modern american history there are a lot of white supremacists and white extremists who support donald trump and work around him who are interested in creating an ethno state in america which is a white dominated white supremacist state which america has but they're look at stephen miller and they're looking to not only protect that but they're looking to escalate it so you have a lot of different interlocking puzzle pieces here yeah it's it's quite extraordinary what you've talked about in the book and and uh stuff that we've had on the show for the chris voss uh i had ever done

an 11 author say to me they're like are you designing this like whole uh theme that's been going through chris voss of different authors and stuff i'm like i don't know no we just pulled like a lot of these authors in fact white christian nationalism and stuff that you've talked about in the book is they submitted their, they submitted their book manuscripts back in 2019. They had no idea we would, I think they kind of saw a little bit, but they had no idea it would be kind of this cataclysmic thing. Well, one of the authors, I'll just say, good. Well, I just want to give context on that.

Like to give an idea of why I wrote this book is because there are problems that have been, I always say this in every appearance I can possibly do it. Donald Trump is a symptom. He's not the disease. There has been something wrong with America. A lot of things wrong with America for a very long time that I will tell you experts have been yelling about,

but they don't get the audience or the attention that they deserve, right? And actually, a lot of Americans right now, this is one of the reasons why those authors are finding audiences, is because a lot of Americans right now are waking up from a dream, right? This myth of America. And all of a sudden, it's becoming very clear that America is not the America that we thought it was, right? There are actually a lot of people who are like, oh, my God, like, what is this? What is this country? Why is it failing the way that it is? And so you're exactly right. There are people who are like pulling back the curtain. And it's suddenly becoming very clear to a lot of people that this thing is actually a nightmare. So I think that's an important thing is we're at a moment where we

have to reconsider, we have to have a great reconsideration about what America is and what it's been, because we're on the precipice of something really bad. And if we don't reconsider, and if we don't reconfigure in a big, big way, it's going to get worse. So I think that's one of the reasons why those authors, particularly, not just been on your show, but are saying the things that they are right now. The City on the Hill idea, your show, but are saying the things that they are right now. The city on the hill idea, of course, has roots around the beginning of America, right? So when America is actually founded, there's a lot of weird things that kind of take place that I wasn't completely aware of. Like, for instance, I didn't know that the people who framed the

Constitution didn't have the authority to write a Constitution. They were actually supposed to revise what, you know, the Articles of Confederation. And James Madison's like, ah, screw that, let's write something new. And everybody's like at the Constitutional Convention, which wasn't a Constitutional Convention. They're like, we're not authorized. And they're like, doesn't matter, Let's do it. So on top of that, one of the interlocking parts is that religion in America starts to unite Americans behind this idea, right? That they are somehow or another chosen, that they are a shining city on the hill, right? And that actually helps create a place where America could break away from Great Britain and start to form its own nation and its own society, right? So we've always had like this weird dance with faith. And in fact, you have a lot of people who weren't even particularly religious, the founding fathers,

they were more deist, right? They were more the idea that the universe might have been created by a disinterested, you know, watchmaker, so to speak. But they were more than happy to use religion, right? They were more than happy to say that America was an ordained country or an inspired country. And then eventually we – So were they using this as a marketing ploy then? Oh, absolutely. To say, hey, let's get away from England and here's our –

you know, it's kind of like build the wall or you know abortion's bad sort of thing so i didn't know this because actually i like this is the kind of stuff that we don't get taught right like when we're actually taught in like schools about the founding it sounds like the declaration of independence happened on a monday and the constitution happened on a wednesday you know and it all bang bang it was actually years and years and years and you also don't know what the makeup of the colonies are when this happens. It's actually about only 30% of Americans at that point were interested in declaring independence. 30% were basically loyal to England, had no interest whatsoever in declaring independence. And then there was a large group of people who were just like, I don't know, I don't really have an opinion on that. It does. Exactly. It totally does.

And so what ends up happening is the revolutionaries, and here's the thing that we have to point out. The revolutionaries weren't just people who were inspired, right? It's not like they received a vision from God that they should like, but that's what they tried to say it was. They talked about how God inspired this revolutionary mindset. No, they had so much money that they were England. So these people start a revolution, and eventually they do this constitution, which, by the way, just to let you know, also advantaged white, wealthy, slave-holding men, right? Like, not only women didn't even come up in the constitution. Yeah, they couldn't vote.

Yeah, they were just over here. Then meanwhile, all of these wealthy elitists, right, they're having one conversation after another about how you can't trust people, like poor people. Anybody who doesn't own land should not be allowed to vote or hold power, and only wealthy people are responsible, right? So they actually create a government.

The reason that we have three branches is because they wanted to have two branches for the wealthy and one for the poor. Right. The House of Representatives. They stack the debt. Yes. And so you're supposed to feel like you have representation in the House of Representatives. But the Senate, I know, and the presidency are where the wealthy gentlemen take over and don't deal with you. That's also why we have the electoral college, which is also to privilege slaveholding states. And we give the southern states more representatives because of slaves.

And we go ahead and we say white men are better than black men. So that's a problem there. So then when eventually they're trying to sell this to everybody. And by the way, tell me if this sounds familiar. So I have you ever talked about QAnon on here at all? Yeah. Okay. We'll talk.

Okay. Okay. So James Madison, John Jay and Alexander Hamilton, they just start posting anonymous letters in the papers. Right. You know, they call themselves Publius. Right. They don't even sign their actual names. It's just some secret, like, you know, figure. And the argument that

they make is this. Yeah, it was probably a coup d'etat. But you know what, if you don't ratify this Constitution, I'm telling you, America is going to fall apart. And those Native Americans in the forest are going to come for us, they going to kill us so you better ratify this constitution so it's the exact same thing that we see now it's just a continual paranoia and then by the way they're like it's also inspired by god so america they use it as a marketing tool to get people to ratify the constitution and then throughout the history of america every time america does something that is inherently evil whether it's genocide slavery or you know later on with reaganism we go to hyper capitalism it's always based on the idea that we are carrying out god's

will and the reagan thing gets incredibly weird that's where i start talking about the idea of the cult of the shining city which is something that i don't think most people understand yeah we we we talked about that several different authors i mean reagan just finds that i think he finds it through someone else but he finds that line and he just he just weaponizes like you talk about and i have a great story about that by the way about where he gets the shining city okay so like you know how like fox news and the right holds up ronald reagan like he's some kind of like christian warrior he's not a christian he's not even really religious he's an occultist he's obsessed with psychics and astrologers right he's actually like passing on classified information to his psychic

so he can get advice from her. Okay. I remember that. In the 1950s, when he's an actor, he's going to so many new age parties and lectures. And he comes across a dude named Manly P. Hall. And if you want to get your ears blown back, go look up Manly P. Hall, everybody. Because this guy is fascinating. So Manly P. Hall is basically the alex jones of his day and he's giving like all these lectures where he's like listen america is god's chosen country and it was created by generations upon generations upon generations of secret societies

right and including atlantis by the way don't don't think for a second that Atlantis doesn't play into this and this idea. The sunken city and the ocean. Yes. And I'll tell you, I'll tell you who buys stock in this idea. And that is Ronald Wilson Reagan. He loves it. He loves this idea. And actually this goes back to your original question. Mainly Pete Hall tells him a story. He says, I have heard from learned men that at the Declaration of Independence, the revolutionaries were not going to sign it.

They were terrified. And then an angel appeared, an angel of God, and told all of them, you must sign this, right? And so here's the thing. Reagan, who was kind of a dullard, let's be honest. He's an actor. Yeah, he's an actor yeah he's an actor and so he loved it and so here's the crazy thing that story was written by a guy who is actually edgar allen poe's best friend and he just writes mythologies like these popular fictions that he doesn't even

pretend are real manly p hall thought it was real sold ronald reagan on it and ronald reagan then starts quoting this um this legend at all of his speeches and he starts talking about that we are shining city on the hill and because the evangelical right was desperate for political power they merged with reagan and they used this occultish myth and suddenly the Republican right in America starts like becoming engrossed in this cult of power, which is based around this completely false mythology. And that's where we really start to see conservatism, I believe, rise out of Reagan. And, you know, we went through the Stephen Miller book, Hatebringer, went on in the 80s when California used to be really red.

And Reagan's racist attacks on Mexicans and stuff, which he, you know, vaulted with that shining city on the hill crap, turned California blue. But, you know, then he just took it to the White House and went whole next level with it. Yeah. And here's the great thing.

Tell me if that sounds familiar. Reagan didn't like to work too much. He didn't really like to hang out in the Oval Office too much. He also wasn't a detail guy. He wasn't interested in policy. He didn't read his briefings. In fact, for the really important briefings, they had to turn them into movies and cartoons for him.

Sounds like somebody else we know. Yeah, it sounds a little bit like it, right? So Reagan, though, wasn't interested in actually being the president. He just wanted to be the pitch guy, right? It's the same thing he did for GE, which is he just went around the country talking about how great America was,

and that's what he loved. Well, meanwhile, all of these conservative institutions, particularly think tanks, right? They hand him like an instruction manual and they're like here's what you need to do here's how to do it and it's it's all based on these policies that he didn't understand that he then goes and he becomes the pitch man for these hyper-capitalistic libertarian ideas right that you know are all about tax cuts raise it and by the way he raised incredible deficits. Like everybody wants to

talk about conservatism. He raised incredible deficits the entire time. Talk about small government guy. He put government in everything. The only thing he did is he kicked homeless, mentally ill people out into the streets and created a homeless crisis. And he got rid of every sort of, you know, support net that anybody had ever had. And meanwhile, he escalates things with Russia until we're to the point of a nuclear war. So you actually have a situation, unfortunately, that really mirrors what you have with Trump. But he's been so lionized by right wing media that people have been worshiping a total mythologized Reagan that has no basis in

reality whatsoever. Yeah. And it's interesting to me and this, and so you talk in the book about American exceptionalism, uh, James Baldwin may have referred to it as the lie, although some of it was mixed with our, our, our issues with racism and stuff. Um, and, uh, one early story that really stood out to me is you talk about the mountain builders. And I think it was Andrew, it was an Andrew Jackson who pushed that idea and, and how it kind of started us down this pathway of where it gave us an excuse to be just the worst people on the planet, really. Oh, the mountain builders thing. I have to tell you.

So there were certain points in writing this book where, and again, it was like, I didn't, I had a basic understanding of history, right? Like that, that like I could have, I could have taken you from the beginning of America to where we are now and just told you the conventional story, right? There were times where I would uncover stuff. And this Andrew Jackson mound builder thing blew my mind. Like I had to go for a walk, man. So Andrew Jackson, so the genocide of the Native American people, like there's a poor misunderstanding on there, right? And the reason that it happened for a large part was real estate.

They wanted their land, right? And a lot of, you know, like, particularly wealthy Southerners wanted the land of Native Americans, and Andrew Jackson wanted to give it to them. Well, Andrew Jackson was an absolute madman. I mean, he, like, he actually, when he was in the War of 1812, right, he actually, like, holds New Orleans captive as a dictator and like he actually like executes people and arrests like these journalists and stuff and he gets completely wiped out and eventually he actually steals a native child out of the dead arms of of like a of a casualty of a battle and then raises that kid like he's a he's a madman right so he becomes president and he

starts um talking left and right about how native people are just terrible and they need to go away and eventually he buys into this thing called the mound builder conspiracy so there are all these mounds around north america that are like these structures right and they were very very popular in the 19th century because they started getting found and people start talking about them and they're sort of advanced structures. Well, they're so impressive

that racist white supremacist Americans do not believe that Native Americans could have made them, right? Because they're so-called savages and primitives. So all of a sudden they create this conspiracy theory that obviously white people made these. And obviously, there were white people on the North American continent before the Native Americans. And then the Native Americans came over and massacred them. So if there was an ancient mythological Aryan race on the North American continent that were slaughtered.

Well, then isn't it within the white person's right to slaughter the Native Americans? And what I found, it actually, it shows up in all kinds of documents from that time period. Andrew Jackson talks about it and alludes to it in his State of the Union. He buys into this thing. And I'll tell you, actually, it had been widely, widely proven false. Initially by Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson, like, digs into one of these mounds. He's like, no, this is a Native American structure.

But Andrew Jackson's like, no, absolutely. This is a mythical race of Aryans who did this. And so we create this mythology. It has no basis in reality whatsoever. And it's one of the reasons why Jackson and all the people that were of his mindset felt good about, you know, carrying out genocide. That was this period where we have just an absolute institutionalized genocide of the Native American people. And here's the thing, it's not just that we're wiping out the Native American people. This is the point in time, and Jackson, as a Democrat, by the way, at that time, was specifically in with white supremacists, right? Because the Democratic Party in the 19th century was the party of the South and the party of white supremacist. So you actually see like complete support of not just racism, but the

mythology of white supremacy. So you know how we're always being told about manifest destiny, right? This idea that God told us to go out and conquer the North American continent. Well, now that's taught in schools where it's like, oh, that was the pioneer spirit. No, it was white supremacy. It was the idea. And going back to what you just said about the lie, right? It actually has its roots in something called the noble lie by Plato. He wrote about this in his Republic. And he was like, in every nation state or nation, you have to create a mythology that you were chosen by God, right? And there are some people who are dipped in gold, who are better than everyone else. And in this case, in America, the manifest destiny was that white people were the most important. And this goes back to sort of, we talked about this for a second before we started recording. In the 19th century, we also have a thing called the romantic, right? Which is this idea that modernity is happening, and that things used to be better, right? And that there was a romantic sort of a feeling about the past. And all of a sudden you start mythologizing not just people. You start mythologizing race and ethnicity. Right. And actually, there's two main countries that go through this. And tell me if you feel where this is going. It's America and Germany. And we start mythologizing like the Middle Ages, the medieval times, right, where all of these ethnic tribes are fighting one another to try and found countries.

So during that 19th century movement, you have a lot of people who are mythologizing things like, I don't know, Anglo-Saxons, right? And they start thinking about race. And so Manifest Destiny is about how the Anglo-Saxon race should rule the North American continent. And if you don't see the connection between not just taking over the country for the Anglo-Saxon race, but how that leaves the seeds for the Civil War, but also Nazism, those things are all interlocked. And there's a three line that goes completely through them. And our history hides all of those three lines, because the truth is really horrific. And it tells you that there's a problem with the foundation of this country. I don't know about you, but all of the education, and I've taken classes in the Civil War, right?

What we talk about when we talk about the Civil War in America is we talk about the military maneuvers, right? We talk about how brilliant the generals were, which gives us a hell of a way to not have to talk about, I don't know, slavery and white supremacy, right? So I didn't know about the Confederacy when I started this project. I only knew what it was and what had been said. We don't examine its culture. And the reason we don't examine its culture is because, again, it's a horrific reminder of who we are and where we've been. The Confederate States of America actually didn't really, it seceded,

but it thought of itself as the real America, right? They thought that the real truth of America was white, not only white supremacy, but espoused white supremacy. And it's not like the North were anti-racist. They actually were very, very racist. They just didn't want to give more power to slaveholding states moving west, right? And actually, this is crazy, and it's something I didn't know about. Abraham Lincoln did not want to keep freed slaves in America. He kept trying to find ways to sell them to other countries. He basically told freed slaves, he told Frederick Douglass,

you need to convince other African Americans to leave America. It's better for us to be different. And listen, that doesn't mean that he isn't a great president or whatever, but he's not a savior, right? He's not a perfect messiah as we've made him, and I'll talk about that in a second. But in the Confederacy, they have a society that's based on conspiracy theories. They believe that the North is going to come down and free the slaves and turn them into their own revolutionary force. The North wasn't going to do

that. The North was only opposed to spreading slavery into the West for political purposes. So the South just, it starts creating this idea that they're under attack. And so you start having a separate mythology. You have Northerners and Southerners, which is how you start a civil war, right, is when you don't believe you're part of the same country, which should sound familiar. Well, the South also believe in the idea of a godly, ordained white supremacist country. It was a theocratic religious dystopia. Right. They they they preach that God wanted this. And actually, you want to talk about people like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, other people like that. They're actually neo-Confederate preachers who believe in white supremacy and all of the accompanying political stuff. But the South, again, like we don't really talk about this either.

The majority of people in the South who were incredibly powerful and wealthy used slavery to create an artificial lower class to keep poor Southerners, poor white Southerners from revolting from the aristocracy. Right. So it's like this big, giant mess that we don't even understand. And it actually reflects so much of what we end up doing is we create this story that was actually pushed by Woodrow Wilson at the turn of the 20th century, where all of a sudden we start talking about the idea that civil war solved racism, and Abraham Lincoln died for our sins. And we create this religious mythology that is just like the Holy Trinity of Christianity. You have George Washington, trinity of christianity you have uh george washington the father right the founder you have patriotism which is the holy spirit and you have abraham lincoln who is the messiah and the martyr and the son and here's a fun fact well it's not fun i feel bad for abraham lincoln

because he got killed so abraham lincoln gets shot on good friday he gets shot on Good Friday. He gets shot on Good Friday and he dies. No, it wasn't on purpose. It just so happened. So he gets shot on Good Friday and then he dies the next day. They have a thing called Black Easter, right? Which is the day that the country mourns Abraham Lincoln. Here's the thing.

Already you are celebrating the resurrection of your dead Messiah, right? All of the churches in the country start showing like Jesus and Abraham Lincoln right next to one another. And they turn him into a religious icon. It's exactly the same religious, civic sort of religion that we've had for this whole time. And we believe that he died for the sin of slavery

and it's washed away. This is why the white nationalists and Donald Trump are always humping Abraham Lincoln so hard. Well, because if, if, if, if the spins of racism have been washed away, then there's no such thing as racism anymore. Right. And so, so what are you complaining about? And it keeps you from being able to even talk about the idea of racism

because we already dealt with that, with that sin. The, um, and then the other thing you alluded to before we went to the Confederacy stuff is Nazism and, uh, uh,

the rise of that. And again, they went through the same sort of thing with Nazism, the, the, and kind of what we're going through right now. And I guess we'll talk about that eventually too, but they, they went through a real bottom in Germany because they'd been,

uh, totally destroyed with the first world war. They, you know, everybody had beaten them up, taking all their money. They were having to pay reparations, you know,

the, their economy was in shambles. And so, you know, it gave rise to that from that bottom for Hitler to rise. And that's almost where we went with Trump. Well, there's a couple of things to examine with this. And unfortunately, we the only story that we tell about World War Two and fascism is that we defeated it. Right. We're the heroes. We don't even have to examine it anymore. So a couple of things that are really upsetting and disturbing about all of this. Number one is that fascism happens when a power that believes itself to be ordained or chosen, because Germany thought, you know, based on World War I, that they were a chosen country, that they were a superior group of people.

Well, obviously, they weren't superior because they lost this war, right? And they were humiliated, and they lost power. Fascism is the use of that nationalized myth of exceptionalism. And when it starts to fail, the question then becomes, well, I thought we were special. How did we lose? Right? And so fascists, what they do is they say, no, that mythology is correct. You've been betrayed. And somebody in this country has betrayed us. And there's a group of people, and it's almost always the Jewish people, right, have manipulated them, and they've created this plan. It's a great betrayal. And it's also a supernatural battle between good and evil. That's a different story. But here's the thing that we don't talk about with fascism. So America actually has its own fascistic movement in the early 20th century. We get really hyped up on eugenics. We actually have like widespread eugenics. Thousands of people are sterilized

here. Actually, a lot of those laws are still on the books, right? Forced sterilizations. We also have this burgeoning philosophy of white supremacy in America. And we have a lot of people we have like, we have books called like the passing of the great race or the rising tide of color against white supremacy, right? Those and by the way, those authors those authors are best sellers but they're also advising the president of the united states and congress now was this woodrow wilson or who was this no woodrow wilson by the way was a disgusting white supremacist at that point no he really he really was like princeton or whoever he's got to pull their name off that thing oh woodrow wilson listen i don't know if people know this

but woodrow wilson actually authored a bunch of southern apologist histories right that eventually got turned into birth of a nation which is like just white supremacy pornography so okay so eventually america is sterilizing all kinds of people we have these authors and philosophers of white supremacy who are like helping uh author our immigration laws right well guess what they hop on a ship and they head on over to germany and they are celebrated like heroes they're meeting with hitler they're meeting with himmler and gerbils meanwhile they're advising their eugenics program they're like sitting there and they're giving their laws they base their eugenic program. They're like sitting there and they're giving their laws. They base their eugenic laws on our laws. Meanwhile, Adolf Hitler didn't want to fight us in the war.

He admired us. He loved, loved, loved, loved that we had a slavery society. He loved the Confederate States of America. He loved the genocide of the Native American people. He even loved loved Jim Crow laws that were taking place post-slavery, right? He actually really wanted very, very badly for Henry Ford to become the president of the United States. He even told reporters left and right, I'm willing to send people over to America to install Henry Ford as a fascist hero in America.

Well, Ford was getting up there in the years and he'd already spread all these anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Luckily, Charles Lindbergh was there to pick up the mantle. And if you actually look at Charles Lindbergh, who weirdly enough, held a thing called the American First Committee, which America First should sound familiar

because it's one of the slogans that Donald Trump has used for years. The America First Committee says, you know what, we don't need to go to war against Germany. We actually need to partner with Germany. And so Charles Lindbergh writes all these articles. It's like, I'll tell you the real danger. And that's people of color. And we need to form a union of white supremacy to win. We need to join Hitler. And here's the thing. He was incredibly popular. And this was the thing that gained a lot of traction.

And who knows what would have happened. And by the way, I don't know if you saw this, but it's like there were like 20,000 Nazis in Madison Square Garden holding a giant rally. And meanwhile, yeah. And you have swastikas right next to George Washington. Right. And because that's that you can take those mythologies left and right. And meanwhile, we don't know what would have happened if Pearl Harbor hadn't happened, right?

Like if we hadn't been attacked and brought into the war that way, there's no telling what this fascistic movement would have become because there were multiple movements in America that were fascistic that were gaining a lot of steam and popularity, particularly during the Great Depression, because you had a lot of esteem and popularity, particularly during the great depression, because you had a lot of people out of work who needed something to be passionate about and something to be known to them about. So that that's when fascism was gaining power here. You know, you talked about, and I remember reading about this,

this is quite extraordinary to realize that Henry Ford wasn't the great guy that everyone thinks he was. He was a racist. Can I tell the story about him everyone thinks he was. He was an incredible racist. Can I tell the story about Henry Ford? I love it. Well, it's terrible to say I love this story because I get excited about history and how bizarre it is. Okay, so I assume the people listening have heard of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, right? This is like the conspiracy theory that Jewish people are controlling controlling the world and and and it's it's it's what motivated i thought it was aliens but yeah i'll get you well i mean hey you're a stand-in

chris they're a stand-in for the they're working for the aliens uh i love my jewish a lot of these people actually talk about aliens but they're actually metaphorical stand-ins for Jewish so-called puppet masters. So I love this story because it's so bizarre, but it's also terribly tragic. So Henry Ford's stupid, like just straight up stupid. Yeah, fourth grade. Yeah, he's just, again, he's just a total dullard. So he goes over to Europe during World War I

because he wants to solve World War I, right? So he's on the way to World War I on this steamer ship. And somebody just says to him in passing, you know why this war is happening, right? He's like, why? And they say, the Jews. And Henry Ford is just like, oh, yeah, absolutely. That's why it's happening. So he starts researching these anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that are

total forgeries. They're not real whatsoever. And Henry Ford starts using all of his power and wealth to start printing and reprinting these documents. He popularizes them all throughout America, all through Europe, catches Adolf Hitler's eye. And actually, this is weird. Of the few portraits that are in Adolf Hitler's office, one of them is Henry Ford, because Henry Ford is weird of the few portraits that are in adolf hitler's office one of them is henry ford because henry ford was one of the people who quote-unquote opened hitler's eyes to uh the the problem of so-called jewish manipulation we create so many fucking monsters man with our bullshit oh and by the way real, real quick, dumb side story. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which is the document that all of this anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are based on, is actually a forgery.

It is a plagiarized document. stolen text that is based on a play a comical play called a dialogue between uh machiavelli and montesquieu in hell that is actually about political manipulation by you guessed it white people it's a projection of white supremacist manipulation paranoia damn man this is it's just so insidious like i remember reading about how I believe Henry Ford started shipping the mentions and crap. Didn't he? I know that, I know that Britain did. And it was a big issue with, with, um, uh, I forgot his name. There were, there were a lot of corporations,

American corporations that not only did business with the Nazis, but subsidiaries of them and factories that they had in Germany were using slave labor. I mean, the big problem here is that we like to imagine this fake story, where Adolf Hitler was just like the most magnetic, charismatic personality that, that you know he hypnotized everybody it was just his speeches right but he was actually egged on by a lot of corporations and a lot of really wealthy people he could not have taken power if the media members and the industrial leaders of the world had not seen a benefit because hyper-capitalist corporations love authoritarianism. They would love to get past voting. They would love to get past the point of liberal

democracy and democratic elections. Because if you do that, I mean, like, if you're in league with an authoritarian, like, it doesn't matter how many hours people work or if people die on the job, because it's in the pursuit of a shared goal. That makes complete and utter freaking sense.

I mean, it's easier to do business with one guy than have to try and do business with the whole government. Cause you just go to the guy and go, Hey, let's do some dirty deals. Um, I know Coca-Cola was doing business with them. I think,

uh, some pharmaceutical companies, but I think the same thing I believe was going on, uh, the Churchill opposed was the, the English were doing the same thing. They were like literally selling them the engines and parts and stuff. And Churchill's

like, what the hell is going on? And they literally gave them the pieces that they end up attacking them with. Well, and by the way, if you want to talk about how history repeats itself, right? So like, let's move forward by 50 years.

Let's go to the first Iraq war, right? So like, let's move forward by 50 years, let's go to the first Iraq war, right? So we go over and we start bombing the Al-Aws to Saddam Hussein, and we're fighting a war against Iraq. Well, Iraq was our ally, we gave them all of their weapons. We fought a war where all of the guns and all of the machinery and all of the technology firing back at us was stuff that we had either given to them or sold to them. It's a continual cycle. And the problem is that our history is so whitewashed, and it's so fabricated, that we're unable to understand that this stuff is a continual cycle that just keeps on happening. And to go off of your point, the idea of dealing with one person or the idea of dealing with a government that has been more or less taken over,

right? That's what we're looking at now. And I want people to get this. When we're talking about like a Facebook, because I keep seeing these articles, it's like, is Mark Zuckerberg a secret Republican? No, these people do not. They're not Democrat, Republican. They're not left. They're not right. They're actually what I call post-political. They don't care if they're dealing with a Democrat or Republican or left or right or blue or red. They want to get beyond elections. They want to get beyond politics.

And whoever helps them, they're more than happy to do it. Right now, it just so happens that Mark Zuckerberg makes more money from people on the right than he does on the left. If it was switched, he would be right there. So what we're dealing actually with is a group of people who don't care about you or me or what happens to us or nations. Nations are dead for them, and they've been dead for them for decades and generations. Going back to those corporations you were talking about, they don't care about war. They care about what happens with their bottom line. They're not patriotic. They are not dutiful.

They are not responsible in that way. They're interested in profit. It's just amazing how the American public doesn't realize this. They just don't get it. They're just like mice and rats that just go, what did they tell me to do at the convention? There's a concept you talked about, and I made some notes of this video I watched of yours, and I'm not sure I wrote this down properly, so I'll just give it to you. You were talking about something about how fascism, well, let's see the posing of it.

Fascism isn't racism, or fascism is racism. Can you expand on that a little bit, what you were talking about? Yeah, so it goes back to that mythology, right? So one of the things that ends up happening is that fascists actually use sort of the racism and the prejudices of a society against the society, right? So like, for instance, you know, when saw donald trump start to really gain power right the first group that he went after were mexicans right he was like they're they're drug dealers they're rapists whatever then a couple of months later and i was actually at this rally was uh it

was right after the terrorist attacks in france right? And he went out and he said, Donald Trump is proposing a complete shutdown, immigration from this or what, right? And then all of a sudden it was, oh, Muslims, right? And then a couple of weeks later, it was immigrants. And then it was caravans. And then it was people at the border. And then, you know, like there were a while,

it was Chinese people, it was Asians, right? It's whatever they can find at the border and then you know like there were a while it was chinese people it was asians right it's whatever they can find at the moment it's a vulnerable population and there's a really predictable cycle with this when an authoritarian or a fascist gets in power um first things first they're inherently incompetent like that's one of the things we don't understand about these people like i don't know about you but it like, I grew up with people who fought world war two and they told, they told me all the time, they would say things like fascists, make the train for our own time. Right. That's the old thing with Mussolini, the idea that, Oh, if, if one, if one person's in power, yeah, maybe they're cruel and awful, but at least they're efficient. Well,

they're not because to be an authoritarian or to be a fascist means that you are technically really kind of incompetent. You can't win in the arena of ideas, right? You can't win in the marketplace of ideas. Right. The only way that you can win is by crushing opposition. If someone disagrees with you, they have to be met with violence until they either agree with you or they're murdered. Or rage tweets. Right, exactly. So what ends up happening is that these authoritarians and these fascists inevitably fail, right? Like, let's say, I don't know, a pandemic happens. They don't want to work with scientists.

They don't want to work with experts because scientists and experts are the embodiment of the idea that they don't know everything, right? They have to pretend that they're not perfect. Which they are. Which, and they don't know everything, right? They have to make them look stupid. They make them look stupid. Which, and by the way, like, right. And so here's the thing. It's not a coincidence that like, not only did Trump go after like physicians and scientists, but it's like in Soviet Russia, one of the first groups that Stalin got rid of were doctors, right?

They purged a ton of doctors. So if you actually look at it, what they do is they inevitably create were doctors, right? They purged a ton of doctors. So if you actually look at it, what they do is they inevitably create a crisis, right? And when the crisis happens, they can't accept that they caused the crisis. So what they do is they double down on what they're already doing, and then they find a scapegoat.

And the scapegoat is a vulnerable group of people that they can turn everyone around and point the finger at, and then they blame a conspiracy. And what they do is they say, you know what? I can't take care of this problem. I can't take care of the traders. I can't take care of the conspiracy unless you give me more power. And then you give them more power. And then the cycle grows and grows and grows until they have all the power and none of the blame yeah we even saw that during the bush administration where they were like you have to give me all the power so i can fight the

the uh isn't it weird though that they isn't it weird that they uh they had all the warnings that they needed for september 11th and yet they failed to act and then instead of as a country talking about how bush didn't prevent 9-11 we're just just like, we need to go out and get the people who did this. But the truth is that Bush just didn't pay attention to his briefings. He didn't care. And so he actually failed to protect the country and then demanded more power to protect the country. It's a cycle. It always plays out. One thing that really blew my mind, you were talking about QAnon,

and then, of course, we've talked a lot of different conspiracies so far in the show, but this thing you said really blew my mind, and it was about conspiracies rising with mythology. And if you want to talk about that a little bit. Yeah, so you have to find some reason why the chosen country fails, right? You just, you have to. And part of the reason you said, I can't believe that so many Americans believe this, but you also have to understand that a lot of people,

their concept of themselves is wrapped up in their national identity, right? And now you have a lot of people that their concepts are wrapped up in trump right so like in 2016 it became um you know it became pretty culturally unacceptable to become a trump supporter like you weren't accepted in polite society right if you walked around in a hat like some people were going to say things to you if you had a trump flag whatever some people would reject you well eventually what ends up happening is the people who went ahead and went full bore on Trump, they never, ever, ever were in a situation where they could admit that they were wrong, right? That would mean personal ruin. So eventually, and by the way, I always tell people to think about this in terms

of sports teams, right? People fill up their identities based on what they support and what they put out. Like, maybe you like your team because it's your regional team. But let's not pretend that that relationship doesn't also somehow or another reflect something about you, right? So like, for instance, I'm actually talking to you right now. I'm wearing a Chicago Cubs shirt. I'm a Cubs fan, right? And the Cubs won in 2016, which completely ruined the mythology of the Chicago Cubs. They're the lovable losers, right? So my support of the Chicago Cubs says

that I'm resilient. I lose things sometimes, but I'll always fight back or whatever. I have dignity in losing or whatever. Well, other people are Raiders fans. I was just going to say I'm a Raiders fan. You feel my pain. So here's the thing. The Raiders, which is weird, going in the weeds, but I promise I'll bring this thing back around all the way.

The Raiders always get more penalties than every other team because they're outlaws. Meanwhile, their supporters, their fans, are roundier than other fans. If you've ever gone to a game or been around Raiders fans, they embrace the identity, right? So here's the problem. The people who support Trump,

they start to become more like other Trump supporters. They become more and more engrossed in the culture of supporting Trump. They have to find a way to explain the failures, right? Meanwhile, QAnon has come along to explain every failure. It has taken everything that Donald Trump has ever done, and it has laundered it and turned it into a brilliant maneuver by a messiah of mankind it is a cult it's a cult because what it does is it takes the cult leader and it completely explains everything that they've ever done through a lens in which you never have to consider if

you've done something wrong or if the country is in trouble so that's where these conspiracy theories come from and they always originate from people who don't have power and they don't have an understanding of how power works. Like the new world order conspiracy theory. It actually is about the global market. It's about the global economy, but it's really hard to understand the global market and the global economy. It's a very complicated study. Well, it's much easier to say there are people in dark rooms who have decided to ruin America and they're out to get us. And that's where the conspiracy theories come from it's because people like simple fucking answers because they want to educate themselves because they're lazy and stupid maybe or they don't even have the the language

to start to understand you know what i mean so like for instance i was raised up i i called the cult of the shining city i was raised up in a household where Christianity was taught alongside New World Order stuff, right? We were being taught that Satan was out to get us and that there were, you know, shadowy rooms to people who were out to get us. The New World Order is Christian apocalypticism plus global economics. And it's been this shorthand mythology that has continually told people that anything they don't agree with is evil right because it's not like people who disagree with you do it in good faith they're doing it because they're part of a cabal they're part of a conspiracy they're out to get you and get your children and and so those ideas are reptilian level stuff right that is like the

most basic if you actually look through the history of the world, that has always existed, and it's always been successful. And one last thing, and I promise I'll let this go. I've been doing research right now for a new project, and I'm actually right now, I'm relearning the history of Western civilization. I'm back in ancient Rome, right? And before Christianity was legal, back when they had to like practice in the dark, right? Underground and in churches. Do you know what the Romans said about Christians? They said that Christians sacrificed babies

and drank their blood and abused them and got magic powers from them. And I'll tell you what happened. When Christianity took over the roman empire they immediately started saying about jewish people that they ate babies they drank their blood they abused them for magical powers it's been the same story for millennia i always wonder why someone invented that and evidently they didn't invent it. They're just replaying the record. It's from the very beginning, and it works every time.

I just said Jesus Christ. That was ironic. Yeah, it was interesting. I made friends with Warren Sapp for a while on Twitter, and I asked him once. I go, man, how come the Raiders just have so many penalties? What the F? They, like, lose games based upon the stack of penalties.

He goes, that's the way we're taught, man. We're just taught that you cheat, you do everything you possibly can, which is like a metaphor for the Trump administration, I guess. Well, and I want to point this out because this is one of the great mysteries that explains what's going on that doesn't go – you're not going to see this on CNN tonight, right right like like this is a conversation you can't have on cnn because we're deep in the weeds at this point we're like you know 50 some minutes in on it the whole truth is that americans in particular everybody is like this every human's like this

but americans are especially like this there is a difference and a huge gap between who you are and who you present to the world. And when you don't understand the difference between who you actually are and who you present to the world as sort of like your character or your avatar, there's a problem, right? And so actually what you see with Trump people, and this is also the basis of fascism, what you actually see is a bunch of people who are terrified and they feel powerless and they feel scared. And so what they're doing is they're overcompensating, right? They're being overly aggressive. They're pretending like they're stronger than they are. And so what ends up happening is that gap between, and by the way, this goes for Donald Trump too. He's a really pathetic dude. He's a really pitiable person. And you know, and you know, you had talked a little bit about the toxic masculinity thing. Like, I think we all know people in our lives who sit around bragging about how much money they have, how many women

they've slept with, how respected they are. And then when they leave the room, everyone's like, oh my God, he's so sad. He has no idea. He has no idea. And I feel so bad for him. And that's who Donald Trump is. But it's, it's a movement that is based on self delusion and angry, violent denial. Like America is in decline right now. And these people are like, no, America's great. Look at my flag. It's like, no,

really, half of the country's on fire. The rest of the country is dying from a pandemic. This guy can't do anything. They're like, oh, yeah? Look at the stars and stripes. It's a delusion. It's a cult of self-delusion. And the important

note that, that, that I really liked how you said it, you said basically conspiracies rise as that mythology dies. And that's why we're really seeing right now, this, you know, the Q and on, and just like the conspiracies with the mass and the virus,

you know, I've, I've seen videos where like Fauci's in on the money and, you know, and he's part of the, you know, the Illuminati, you know,'ve i've seen videos where like fauci's in on the money and you know and he's part of the you know illuminati you know i can't i mean just pick your pick your fiction and and we're seeing just i mean it's like almost off the rails from the crazy i mean the mass thing is just like if i wear a mask i'll die it's a against us. And you're like, how did the doctors must die every day? Cause they wear a mask for 12 hours and every single day they do a surgery. To go back to what I was just saying,

one of the problems that, so there were two problems with the mask thing that led to this. One is the fact that a lot of men are terrified to show weakness and wearing a mask says i'm i'm worried about something you know what i mean like i i thought there was a missed opportunity to make mask wearing like masculine put skulls on fashionable yeah yeah just just put put skulls on them left and right get a bunch of harley masks out there but i think we could have donald trump could have a gold mask that's his thing oh yeah he would have loved it but the second thing is from the very beginning i don't know if you remember this they were like

well don't wear masks because they're in short supply and they won't protect you the problem here is it's it's about protecting one another, and America is about radicalized individualism. Like, oh, if I wear a mask, it helps you? Well, no. Screw that. I'm going to do what's good for me or whatever. And then we have to face facts,

and this goes back to your main question. America is a failing state right now. It can't help anyone like i i and inherent in the main self well yeah exactly so like okay here here's the sad streamlined truth that that we've been dancing around this whole time we have spent all of our money on a national security stake we have redistributed wealth from the people to the national security industrial complex, right? We're talking weapons manufacturers.

We're talking a bunch of think tanks, wars, all of that. We've spent all of our money in political and social capital on this hegemony project, right? And it failed. The forever wars, Iraq, Afghanistan, they bled us dry and everyone around the world now understands that america was trying to control everything in the world we've now reached the point where so much of our budget is spent towards that we can't pay for education we can't pay for infrastructure we can't pay for health care and our basic i mean it's been

the last few years our life expectancies are going down right suicides are going up unemployment's going up we've now reached this point where we can't fight the pandemic by the way global climate change and the catastrophe that's coming from that we can't even agree that it's a real thing right we're all on fire yeah and we're all on fire we california's the worst guys and we're just like, I'm not sure. Right. And here's the damnedest thing. We could have made so much money off of global climate change. We could have just, oh my God, we've been, we could have put out so much industry. You know what I mean?

Like creating every alternative method. I mean, we are, our gas companies, and by the way, our gas and oil companies knew it was real. They knew in the 1980s it was real, and they were figuring out how to profit from it. We've now reached the terminal point of the American project. We're a failing state. The only thing a failing state can offer its people is violence. It can't help them. It can't make their lives better, and so it puts them down via violence.

So here's the question. Are we going to pull up out of the tailspin or are we going to explode like a dead star that explodes under its own weight? Trumpism says we explode in a rageful moment. And I have to tell you, this is the unfortunate truth. Trumpism is not isolated. It's neo-fascism. And neo-fascism is on the rise around the world, right? Because this economic system is failing. And when these systems go down, you can either figure out an alternative or you go straight into fascism. We've seen that time and time again in world history. We have a big choice to make, and we need to make it fast. Most definitely. I mean, you really nailed it on the head right there, man.

You hit it out of the park. I guess in 2008, 2009, we did the right thing. Of course, we had different presidents, George Bush, who wrecked the economy, 2009, where I'm like, okay, get ready, man. It's going to get much worse. One of the things I saw you talking about on the show is you've been on a call where there were preachers raising about the Insurrection Act. We've seen William Barr talking about charging American citizens with sedition and different things uh can you expand on that a little bit yeah so here's and again this is one of those warnings that i i want people to understand there's a track record of this when a group that holds power in a country particularly for generations and i'm talking about for generations. And I'm talking about white people

here, right? I'm talking about white Christians. Really? White people again? They're always doing this. And white Christians. I know. So here's what happens. When a power group starts realizing that they're losing power. So in America, and listen, if any white supremacists are listening, I have bad news for you that you already know, which is demographics are changing in this country, right? There is an ascendancy among people of color who have more influence, more wealth, more capital, more political say in what's happening. So what ends up happening is when a power group realizes it's losing control of democracy, they start becoming anti-democratic, right? They start figuring out ways to keep people from voting. Like, I don't know, they disenfranchise them. Or they make it to where you have to wait in line

for four hours to get to a polling place. Or they throw out a bunch of disinformation. Or, I don't know, I live in the state of Georgia. They publish their voting rolls. Right. So, and then all of a sudden, if that's not enough, they'll start destroying democratic institutions. They'll start breaking the law. They'll make the law malleable. There's one law for you. There's one law for us. Like, I don't know, maybe it's like a bunch of criminal cronies get arrested, but and then convicted, but they don't actually go to jail. Right. So eventually, what ends up happening is you have a point where they can't even hide the anti democratic ideas anymore. And we have a group of people right now,

and I've talked to enough Republicans, and I've talked to people with the Trump campaign. There is no poll right now that shows Donald Trump even coming anywhere near to winning the popular vote. And most of the internal polling says that he doesn't really stand that much of a chance to win the Electoral College, even though the Electoral College is designed to privilege people like Donald Trump through white supremacy. They know that the jig is up. And as a result,

they're not actually running for reelection. They're running to undermine faith in elections. And the idea is if we can't win this election, we either need to steal it or we need to stop it. And that's where we're going with this thing they're sowing they're sowing the seeds of it for sure and i've seen like somebody said the other day they one of the voters the trump voters they're like yeah if donald trump loses we're going with the militias to washington and take over which i don't believe i know how lazy fucking americans are and especially these people. They're just going to drift back as ghosts in their racist closet.

There might be a few outbreaks here and there. I don't see us going to a civil war. You know, people are too busy making money, and they've got their kids and their fence at home and, you know, their pornography and their TVs. So I don't see it being a big crisis. I think what the biggest crisis is going to be is he's going to fight to retain power. I mean, this is a guy who knows he's probably going to jail after this because once he leaves office, there's probably a whole lot more investigations

that are running that are going to serve him, and this will probably be our first president to go to jail. My biggest fear is that he won't live long enough because he's kind of old and having many strokes and and stuff by the time he sees the inside of a prison he may have passed on but i want to ask this have you seen his tweets from 2012 the 2012 presidential election uh i i not specifically that i can remember but there's been references to it i think okay so the night of the 2012 election right which was mitt romney losing to barack obama uh and by the way it wasn't close like barack obama you know beat up on that romney electorally right donald and by the way it's not only like Donald Trump loved Mitt Romney. I mean,

he hated Barack Obama, but he did not love Mitt Romney more than Donald Trump. Donald Trump did not love Mitt Romney more than Donald Trump loves Donald Trump, right? The night of that election, when it was called, he said, we need to march on Washington and start a revolution. It's time, this country has been taken over. It's time to take it back by force. I have to tell you, I don't, and I think one of the problems when we talk about what's going on in America, it's when we talk about

the idea of there being like a new civil war or civil war-like skirmish. In our minds, we imagine armies in a field. You know what I mean? Like there's a camp over here, a camp over here, and then there's, like, picnickers, you know, watching this thing.

And there's, like, the day's entertainment. What I'm worried about isn't, like, widespread civil war. What I'm worried about is widespread sectarian violence. Right? So we've now seen, I'm sure you saw this in Los Angeles. It was, like, in Portland, there was a bunch of Trump truck people going into the cities with like, you know, some of them had weapons, some of them had mace and gases and stuff like that. The problem is that that really mirrors sectarian violence in other countries.

I mean, all it takes is for people to go into the place. The ISIS trucks. It looks a lot like the Rwandan genocide. There's a lot of elements there. And it doesn't have to be like, you know, every Trump voter in formation going over here to a blue state. The problem is it can look a lot more

like what was called Bleeding Kansas, which was before the Civil War, which is where you had limited skirmishes between like sex group of people who would go after one another. So I think I think violence, violence is a real high possibility. And I told people back in 2016, when I was covering the Trump campaign, I said, if we get out of this without widespread bloodshed, we should consider ourselves lucky. We've already had widespread bloodshed in this country. And I don't know how we get out of this without it getting worse.

So it's not necessarily full-scale civil war, but I think sectarian violence is a real possibility. I got to tell you, the only terrorists I'm afraid of, I mean, at least when I'm in America, the only terrorists I'm afraid of are guys who look like me, my color, usually about my age. those are the guys who always go off and then you got the boogaloo boys uh you got the uh uh you got the uh proud boys uh you know and all these different things and i think you're right i think there's going to be some

explosion i think secretarian uh the right wing white christ Christian fundamentalists might join that crowd too. Not all of them, but I think there's... Oh, I think they already have. I think that they've already found common practice together. And that's the really frightening thing, is I don't think that we have a decent understanding of what motivates these groups. Many of them are Christian fundamentalists.

And I'll tell you who they look up to. And this is going to... Maybe this will blow some people's minds and other people it might not. They have taken their cues from Al-Qaeda and ISIS. They understand that they are the other side of that coin. They have studied them. They've looked at how they became radicalized. They looked at how they recruited. They looked at their tactics.

They take their cues from actual religious fundamentals. That's exactly right. Yeah. I mean, I've been telling people for weeks now, especially with all the different great authors we've had talking about Christian white nationalism, that this really is like ISIS. This is, this is, but we've been talking about the Betsy DeVos and I forget the name of the

council, the council of national, I don't know if you know it, but the Betsy DeVos and I forget the name of the council, the council of national. I don't know if you know, but the Betsy DeVos things, the fundamental resurgents, I've been watching the right wing. He watch, I think it's called or something. And these preachers are preparing. And when I see bar and Trump doing is starting to try and militarize or,

or militia, that sort of thing where, yeah, man, if we don't win we gotta go to violence and shit and which scares me because if trump does win like how much further do we go down this fucking hole like there is no new another election as far as i'm concerned i could be wrong but well um i'll tell you what they enjoy authoritarians love the facade of democracy. So it's a thing called managed democracy. And

you have to look at Putin as Russia for it, right? What authoritarians love is that they love to allow the citizens to have rights and to allow elections, but they keep them so afraid that they won't use them, right? That's the that's the dream is that you give the facade, they call it open and closed measures. It's this idea that like you, you keep everyone terrified to the point where they will never, ever, ever want to like speak out and actually oppose you. But if they could, they totally, you know, they, or if they wanted to, they totally could.

I mean, they might end up poisoned, right. Or falling out of, I don't know, a 10-story balcony. But, yeah, that's what we're looking at. And I keep telling people, and I know this sounds horrific, if Donald Trump wins or steals the election, we're looking at a future where, like, an election is between Ivanka and Donald Jr. I mean, that's the kind of thing that we're talking about. We're talking about legacy.

Yeah. And I'm not sure if you brought this up or someone else in some of the news that brought up. I think you were. Well, I think I mentioned earlier, I think you saw some of the preachers were talking about invoking the Insurrection Act, which would have Trump mobilizing the military. I mean, there's not even talk, I believe, within the military, at least in people that are giving advice and consulting, where they actually run scenarios of what happens. And it may be that we have, like, an Egyptian-type takeover, or at least where the military has to step in to Donald Trump and go, sorry, bud, we're not going to go against american people for you we're going to remove you from office someone put biden in or whatever and and even then it

could go sideways as you saw in egypt there was it was during the black lives matter protest movement there was a really really really underreported story and it was while donald trump and bill barr were and you know it was while Donald Trump and Bill Barr were, and you know, it was like Tom Cotton was like writing that fascist op-ed and it was like, it's time to start killing is basically what that should have been titled. And there was this story that it made the rounds, but it didn't get the attention it deserved,

which was that military commanders, the joint chiefs of staff started sending out memos to soldiers and the memos said remember you swore an oath to the constitution yeah i remember this these are not alarmists right these are not reactionaries and listen i i gotta take a victory lap where i can because i don't want to pat myself on the back. There have been a lot of us who have been screaming about this for years. The more status quo people were like,

yeah, yeah, yeah. He's an authoritarian. He's a fascist. Whatever. And finally, we're in 2020 and they're like, is he a fascist? They're screaming with me now. Yeah. I'm like, what are you to the welcome to the party everyone it reminds me a lot of like the people in 2003 who wanted the iraq war and in 2008 were like

who could have ever appointed that terrible war it's like i see you yeah but so the the joint chiefs of staff are not alarmist. They're not reactionaries, right? They know that this is a situation. But we have another problem. And the other problem is that white supremacists, particularly in this country, are really interested in power. And so they have flooded the military, all of the branches, and they've flooded law enforcement.

Now, does that mean that every military member or every law enforcement person is a white supremacist? No, it does not. But it does mean that you have a lot of people in those ranks. And it goes back to what I'm saying about the Civil War idea. I don't think it would be widespread. I don't think that it would necessarily be that. But I'm telling you that there are people in positions of power and authority who are, they're ready to go. And they've been ready to go for a long time. For a long time they've been preparing for this. That one guy who's run the NHS, who is there illegally, technically,

according to a judge recently, who is attacking Portland. Well, this has been an amazing discussion, dude, and hopefully we live to see another day. That or I'll meet you in the gulag. Well, if we're in the re-education camp we can we can talk about the old sure yeah yeah we'll have to i don't know do hand signals because if they catch us talking anyway uh this has been an incredible discussion to find out more and read more go get jared's book american rule how a nation conquered the world but filled its people anything more you want to tell us in parting uh

jared and give us your plugs too. Well, yeah. So you can find my stuff over at J.Y. Sexton on Twitter. The Muckrake Podcast is my podcast. I'll just say really quickly because, I mean, obviously we got really dark because this thing is bad. I mean, it's a terrible, terrible thing. I'm going to name myself.

I like to say this because, you know, people keep saying, is there hope? There is hope because here's the one thing that history tells us. We're like at moments like this, at moments of crisis, they can also be used as moments of hope and change, right? Because if you reach the point of societal and political existential crisis, that means that people are possibly ready for something good to come from it. So what I tell people is this.

You need to understand that this is dire, but you also need to understand that you can make a better world. Like we can fix things and get this ship on the right track, but you first have to understand how bad this is. So once you understand that, I think that there's the idea that this could be malleable and that you could change it. So that's what I would leave it with.

Yeah, we got a nice little you there at the end. You know, I believe the same thing too. We have to not even make this election close. We have to make it a referendum on the Constitution democracy, and we have to send this guy packing with numbers so large that they back off and they go, okay, I'm not willing to do this anymore. And by the way, we have to run up the score on him. But the other thing that we have to do,

and this has been a problem over the last four or five years, we have to look beyond Trump. Like your goal to be Trump is one goal. You also have to say, what do you want to do after Trump? Because I'll tell you what, a sane working country does not elect Donald Trump president, and they don't act like this. This country had problems before him. So getting back to that is not the end game, right? So I always ask people, I'm like,

you need to sit down and you'd say, okay, first we beat Trump. What do you want after that? And if you look past that, I think that we can author a better world. And I think we can like swing that pendulum. I think we could find something good. I think you're right. If we can be them bad enough, there's a possibility that maybe it'll send a signal that we don't put up with this shit. For a certain degree. We seem to, you know, always go back to it. We seem to go through these ups and downs.

You can see them in the present. So I've learned um and one of the sad parts about this is we're going to spend the next 10 years cleaning up this fucking mess if not longer rebuilding america's place in the world uh just cleaning out i mean we're gonna spend years with commissions going through all of the corruption and shit we're gonna find the basement in the white house it's the best case scenario that's the best case scenario is that we have those commissions. And then hopefully when we're done, we'll remember like, okay, maybe we should build something better.

But yeah, we're at a bottom. I mean, coronavirus really just, we were really messed up up until then, but we were kind of drinking through it. We're like, party on still. Yeah, put on the card. But coronavirus is like, let me show you all your problems. And we're not even at the bottom of that. Yeah. And we're not even at the bottom of that. Yeah.

And we're not even at the bottom of that. Like, we're not at the bottom of that. The bottom is until, like, next year or two years. I know how this recession crap goes. We're not even close to the bottom. In fact, October is when the PPE runs out and a lot of people get laid off. And then we still haven't, you know, it's just crazy what we got to go through.

And even if Biden wins reelection, which I hope he does, the repair he's going to go through, you know, whatever. So there's that. And it's not like the extremists are just going to say, okay, the jig is up. Right. Like we have, we have a lot of work to do. For sure.

We should have you on again. We'll do a part two if you want. Um, because I think one of the other things that the religious people are going to love is this was their resurrection, their comeback, the Betsy DeVos takeover, white supremacy, Christian schools, all that sort of shit. We're going to be taking that gauntlet away from them that they thought they had. They're not going to go quietly. I don't know what that means, but they're not going to be happy about it.

So let's put it that way. And I think they're going to fight to keep power. I think they are too because they've been told that they should expect an apocalyptic battle. I mean, there's a reason why – Exceptionalism. Well, I was just going to say there's a reason why there's a reason exceptionalism. Well, I was just going to say there's a reason

why Donald Trump posed in front of the church with a Bible and said he was a long order president. They have been, by the way,

like, I'm so sorry. I could talk about that for hours. There's a reason why these people have been prepping and hoarding weapons

and thinking that they're going to fight the new world order. They're waiting for a battle and, and, and,

and, and damn it, they're going to get it that's the that's the thing about i think you're exactly right this isn't going to be a simple solution it's all over yeah i mean it would be much easier if there was a coronavirus and on at least election night we would know the fact that we won't know that's going to be a problem and the fact that you can be delayed and and then of course he's the guy who wants to sue all the way to the Supreme Court over everything. But, yeah, it's warren for a road, man. Buckle up, babies. But spread the word.

Vote. Read American Rule by Jared H. Sexton. Check it out on Amazon. You can go to Amazon.com forward slash shop forward slash Chris Voss and see all the books that we've been having discussion with. You want to order them all read, please share the word,

get everyone registered to vote. I'm, I'm kind of excited this morning. I think I saw it was Virginia or one of the Eastern States has opened its polling and there are huge fricking turnout lines. So I'm hoping that's a good sign that, that people realize the inflection point that we're at. I'm not really even sure what living in this country is going to be like. But I'd love to

have you on again, Jared, where we can talk about this more. There you go. All right. Well, thanks for tuning in. Be sure to stay safe. Vote. Register to vote. We'll see you next time.