The Daily Beast Podcast - The Decision Trump Made That May Destroy NYC Someday

Episode Date: January 9, 2022

Canadian author Stephen Marche, whose new book The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future chronicles what he saw while reporting in far-right Ohio aka Oathkeepers’ Country, came on The New Abnormal to share the troubling stories with host Molly Jong-Fast, including dreams of a Civil War, and explains how one little Trump decision could destroy an entire city. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of The New Abnormal, and then we thank you so much for being here. Today we have author and essayist Stephen March, and he's going to talk to us all about his new book, The Next Civil War, Dispatches from the American Future. Welcome to New Abnormal, Stephen March. Pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. So I started reading your book. Explain to us how you got here.

I was reporting on the Trump inauguration, and it wasn't, you know, I was never a sort of political reporter or anything like that. But then I was like, okay, well, let's go. into Middle America. Let's go and meet Oathkeepers and let's go to Ohio and go to Prepper Conventions and then see what they're like. And I do get along quite well with far

right people and they talk to me and they have no problem talking to me. So that seemed like something that I could offer. And then also just trying to put together the pieces of where it's going. And what did you see when you were there? Well, I saw a complete lack of faith in the political system

and a sense of loss and also a messianic kind of conception of freedom. Like you go and hear people talk and they talk about property tax as a form of slavery. And, you know, as a Canadian, of course... What? Property tax is a form of slavery? Yeah, they're like, you don't own your body because if you don't pay your property tax, then they'll take away your house and you'll starve to death. That would be nothing.

And, of course, conspiracy theories, really elaborate conspiracy theories, and a lot of guns, a worship of guns. And so, you know, yeah, that's really what I saw. And of course, it's all not very sustainable. Like, it's not very realistic. It's very romantic in its own way. And it's totally divorced from policy. You know, and as a sort of boring peace order and good government, Canadian, it was very, very foreign to me, for sure. When did you start thinking, like, America can't undo this? Like, we're heading for something really, really bad. Well, I don't think America can't undo it. I mean, I think America can't undo it. I mean, I think America. America is a great country of reinvention. And I think it has reinvented itself several times in the past. So I wouldn't put it past America to reinvent itself.

But, I mean, it did become clear to me that, like, without radical change, it's headed in a very terrible direction. I don't think the domestic terrorism threat has been taken nearly seriously enough by anyone. I think the current president hasn't addressed it nearly enough. I mean, I think the FBI is doing their job. But, you know, this is going to be a generational effort to get domestic terrorism out of America. And I don't really see that underway. You know, and the other thing is like, it's just sort of kind of doing the math. It's like by 2040, 30 percent of the population will control 68 percent of the Senate.

You know, already five out of nine Supreme Court justices were selected by presidents who didn't win the popular vote. You know, you look at the numbers on the sense of the legitimacy of the government and they're basically in freefall, right? So it was kind of like putting the pieces together, if you know, what I mean, synthesizing the data that's already out there because, you know, the amazing thing is that the models of decay are just unbelievably good, right? They just, they know to the street what will happen when a hurricane hits New York. Yeah, that's how I built it. That New York Post story, I want to talk to you about it. When I was reading it, it's an excerpt from the book. But basically, you had a story in the New York Post that was an excerpt from the book that was talked about what happens of a category. 45 hurricane hits New York city. I wouldn't say it was an excerpt because they completely rewrote it and they redid all the research, which was actually quite nice of them. But yeah, I mean, not that I disagree with anything in there.

Like, it was absolutely fine. And I think they did a great job. But, yeah, I mean, they know to this, like, the models of what happens when a hurricane hits New York are incredibly strong. They know what it looks like because so much is at stake. You know, I mean, Miami and New Orleans are very nice. towns, but New York is New York. You know, 88% of the world's international currency goes through it.

It's still the capital of the world, really. And it's also unrebuildable. When it floods, it's the density of infrastructure is so thick that to rebuild it, unlike Miami or Houston or New Orleans, they simply won't be able to rebuild it. So, yeah, and then, you know, the other thing is, like, the people who gave me advice about what kind of hurricanes will hit New York, those are reinsurers. So those are like people at AIG. and companies like that rely on them to make trillion-dollar bets.

They're absolutely the best available models. So it's concerning. You know, like it seems like a disaster movie, but it is based on absolutely the best science, the best predictive models you could find. Yeah. As someone who has lived through numerous bad shit in this city, yes, it's possible.

And certainly we did have something similar to that where the power went out, you know, for a long period of time. So you mean Sandy? Certainly possible. Yeah, Sandy. Yeah. I mean, Sandy wasn't even a hurricane, right? Like, by the time it hit the-

It was category two, I thought. No, no. It was downgraded to a tropical storm. It was category two in the middle of the Atlantic. But when it hit, it was just a storm. It took years to repair. And the fact that Trump canceled the seawall, I mean, of all the irresponsible decisions that are in this book,

that is the one that shocked me the most. I mean, really, it's just shocking. to me, that you would be a country in possession of New York City, and you would leave it that vulnerable to what you know is coming. What's happened with the seawall since then? I actually don't know. I mean, the last time I checked, which was just when the book was being fact-checked at the very end, it was still suspended.

That's so insane, right? Genuinely insane. It boggles my mind. Yeah, that's pretty grim. Another piece I read of yours that was from the book was in the Washington Post. Yeah. Can you talk about that? Well, it's just about the possibilities of secession, which I actually don't think is, I don't think it's a worst case scenario at this point.

No, it's definitely not the worst case scenario. No, I think it's one of the better case scenarios for the United States. And I think people on the left and in blue states are going to start to figure that out sooner rather than later, like possibly with the abortion decision of this year, that that represents a viable option for them. But the problem is that it's red states with blue cities everywhere. I mean, there's a host of problems with it. Like, the legal aspects of separation are a bureaucratic nightmare. The U.S. Constitution, basically after the Civil War, they made it impossible to discuss secession ever again. Yeah, that was pretty interesting, too.

You wrote about that. Article 14 of the Constitution, which is also central to voting, basically means that you can't be denied any rights as an American citizen because of your belonging to a state. And so, you know, all the, all the separatists argue that secession is constitutional, which itself is an incredibly weird fact that the secessionists worship the constitution. But anyway, like, Quebec separatists do not worship the BNA Act. They don't worship, like, Catalan separatists don't worship the Spanish monarchy. But in America, the constitution is such a, like, it's such a document of worship that even the separatists love it and can't bear to think they're violating it. Yeah, they all believe that it's constitutional,

but it really isn't. Like, Scalia was pretty clear that it would never reach the Supreme Court because it's too obvious. Like, there's just simply no, there's no case to be made that it's constitutional. Plus, there's the UN bureaucracy, which is, you know, quite elaborate. And I go into some detail in the book where, you know, if you want to separate, you need the approval of the Security Council, and that's why it's so hard. But, you know, just because these things are legal nightmares doesn't mean they don't often happen. Like, countries still separate. And I actually think it would be one of the healthier options for the states right now. But it can't happen. I think we're heading into some very serious dark waters right now. Right. Where, like,

when political violence becomes normalized, suddenly a lot of options seem possible. Right. Certainly true. Because like when the alternative is mass violence or feeling like you don't belong in a democracy, which I think is going to happen very soon, you know, I think people will start to look for other political options other than, you know, just winning elections because that's, you know, that's not going to be enough. The thing about secession, which I always think about, is that it really is the same as Brexit. It would be more complex than even than Brexit, much more complex than Brexit, Because you have the military, you have federal institutions like NASA, you have, like, oh, pensions, it's a complete mess, right, to do. But you're sanctioning yourself, ultimately.

Yeah, I mean, it's very costly. You know, there's no question that it is costly to secede. You know, but on the other hand, if the other alternative is war, civil war, literally any price is worth that, avoiding that. Right. I've talked to some people on this book tour who think that a civil war might be good for America. I mean, it never occurred to me for a moment. Those are the same people who think that Trump was good for America. Yeah, they overlap for sure. But I was like, 600,000 people died in the civil war.

Like, it was a true catastrophe, mass death kind of catastrophe. To think that that might be, you know, some kind of benefit just beyond me. Yeah. It's a really kind of amazingly bad take. I try not to be judgmental, but that one I do judge. I mean, like, that is not a good take. There is a question of, like, could there be a world where part of the United States went to Canada? That would be amazing, wouldn't it?

We could take the whole West and East Coast. That'd be perfect. I mean, all you have to do is swear loyalty to the Queen of England. Hey, man. I've done worse this morning. It is a fundamental question that it does. does seem untenable the place where America is right now. And that's how you got to this.

Yeah, on a number of fronts. And, you know, the technical term is complex cascading system, which is where, you know, things start to feed into each other and then slowly, that's why the unimaginable keeps happening because it's how turbulence works. It's like things feed into each other. Inequality feeds into bad electoral decisions, which lead it to bad policies, which leads to more damage, you know, and it all feeds into each other. And that's what, it's the, it's the instability that's ultimately what's so dangerous and not just dangerous for America,

but dangerous for the world. And what else did you see on this reporting trip that got you so worried? I mean, it's funny, actually, the things that worried me. Talking to the corn expert, the guy who was the leading USDA corn expert, I couldn't sleep for quite a while after I talked to him. Wait, why? Okay, okay. Yeah, that's interesting. Well, I know it sounds funny. First of all, he's just like really cheerful, optimistic. You know, he lives in Ames, Iowa. He's just a decent guy who knows an awful lot about farming. He's not partisan. I don't, it wouldn't be meaningless to describe him as Democrat or Republican. He's just an American. And so, you know, he's describing corn and he's like, he worries about the adaptation trap that they won't be able to adapt corn to rising temperatures and the decline of waterfall in the Midwest. And, you know, that's 40% of commodity staple food in the world. It comes from the Midwest of America.

It is the breadbasket of the world. The American farmers are incredible innovators. Like, the yields have increased ninefold since the 30s. Like, they are right on the edge of how far you can take agriculture. But at some point, they're going to reach a limit, and food is going to get a lot more expensive. And the world that we live in is entirely based on cheap food. And at the core of that is cheap corn. And when that goes away, a lot of things start to fall apart.

I mean, a lot of things start to fall apart. Even saying it, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, it's really, it really scares me. Talking to these Nazis and so on, like, that was all fine. I've met lots of people like that before. But that guy really, really scared me. Yeah. I mean, that is really not good. You see the environmental, the coming environmental catastrophe as dovetailing with the American

division, right? Yeah, I mean, they feed into each other. Like, let's say a hurricane were to hit New York next summer. So not impossible, but, like, it's not likely, but it's not, it's certainly not impossible. No, we get hit by hurricanes. I mean, we don't get hit by category five ones, but yeah. But, like, a significant hurricane of, like, category two or stronger. Okay.

So, and that's the result of the bad political decisions of not building the seawall. So that bad political decision then leads to this failure to deal with the environment. environmental problems. The environmental problems lead to huge numbers of environmental refugees. I mean, the number that I got in the book, which was, it's the latest research. I mean, it's not, it's not maybe the strongest model, but it's definitely a good model, said that by 2050, there will be 13 million climate change refugees in the United States. That's a pretty staggering number. That's a lot of people wandering your country, homeless. And that creates all kinds of tensions. And those tensions lead to violence.

And so this is how this works. It's like there's a feedback mechanism built into it. So yeah, like these things all feed into each other. That's why I wrote the book in the way I did just to show that they're like nothing is separate. Everything is built together and everything happens at the same time in the same place. And that's why it feels so shocking. Sorry. All right.

Thank you, Stephen. Enjoy Canada. The rest of us are here. I'll keep an extra mattress for you. Yeah, seriously. And citizenship. We might have to get married. Right.

Please come back. Okay, I'd love to. Have me on any time. I'd love it. Thanks. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks

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